The Ordinary Seaman (33 page)

When he returns to the cabin, Esteban is asleep. He steps through the pitch dark, sits on the mattress, takes off his shoes, and gets under the blanket fully clothed, oblivious to the sour reek of the bedding. The cabin smells cleaner from the briny autumn air streaming in through the portal. He lies listening to faint tickings and scrapings in the ship’s iron canyon of silence, and to Esteban breathing through his mouth and snorting runnily through his nostrils. The chavalo sounds like he’s coming down with another cold, he thinks.

He decides to fall asleep thinking about Clara. He wants to try to remember that long and tortured courtship: waiting for her every day, at siesta and in the evening, in the little park full of flame trees by the lake, outside the telephone building where she worked as a teller, twenty-five years ago. That’s nearly the age Clara was when he set out to convince her that what she really needed in her life, rather than the treacherous muchachitos endlessly pursuing her for the ephemeral prize of her yellow hair and German surname despite her bulk and frankly plain features, was an ardent ship’s waiter three years older than her late father would have been, who could give her the security and adoration
a grown dama deserved, one who’d saved nearly enough money to buy a nice little house, with plumbing. One sultry evening, as he was walking her from teléfonos to her mother’s house as usual, their lips stained purple from the pitaya juice they drank through the torn corner of a plastic bag, holding it to each other’s mouths like a translucent udder and squeezing, she finally relented: they shared their first triumphant, lingering kiss, hidden in the shadows of trees and wall. But now, somehow, it’s like watching his own dulled nostalgia disguised in Clara’s chubby features and clothes, waving good-bye to him from a receding pier. Her love turned out to be a sharp-tongued, needy demon, which he learned to satisfy with joy in his heart. She always hated him for going away to sea again, but whenever he returned they ended up holding hands everywhere they went, behaving in public like teenage lovers—until he had to go away again, spattered by the abuse provoked by her already missing him. He tried to save every cent of his wages, and his daughters were always so well fed and neatly dressed that their schoolmates believed he was either a ship’s capitán or a smuggler. They were one day out from Port Suez the evening Capitán J. P. Osbourne quietly called him out from the crew’s mess where he’d been playing dominoes, saying, Sorry to bother you, Bernardo, but I’m afraid I need a button sewn onto my shirt for when we berth tomorrow. That was ominous, because the portly English capitán usually called him either Bernie or Old Bean. Capitán Osbourne led him up the switchback stairs to his quarters, stepping gingerly from the gout in his left toe and making light conversation about the button popped off his shirt: I suppose I really shouldn’t drink so much beer and try to do some sit-ups, but really, what a bore! In his quarters he shut the door, said, Have a seat, would you, Bernardo? and then sat himself in the armchair on the other side of the desk while Bernardo anxiously wondered what he’d done to merit being fired with such English politeness. Capitán Osbourne told him that he’d received notification over the radio two days earlier that his wife, Clara, was in the hospital in Managua and that it was apparently serious and that he and the radio operator had agreed not to say anything until now to spare him the anguish of feeling trapped onboard with land still so
far off. The company was paying for his flight from Egypt to Nicaragua. Oh yes, and a neighbor was taking care of his daughters. And then Capitán Osbourne gently said, As for that button, Old Bean, I’m afraid that wasn’t only a ruse.

He notices the chill in the air somehow touching the tears in his eyes like a searing light, making them burn even hotter against his cheeks. He begins to fade into sleep with his mouth open and tilted towards the porthole, already dreaming that this invigorating air he’s so hungrily gulping down is really Esteban exhaling the cool, moist air of a new love. It seems to fill the cabin with the most perplexing smell, autumnal and tropical at the same time, as if cold northern weather had suddenly descended on a port town that has been rotting in steaming weather since the beginning of time.

ESTEBAN HAD MADE UP HIS MIND WHILE EATING RASPADO AT THE RAIL
, staring out the harbor: he’d accept the challenge of, at least, the viejo’s more practical advice. He’d gone to bed feeling impatient for morning, wrapped tightly in his blanket, belching from the nervous fluttering of his stomach around a slag heap of greasy, charred rice. Turning over in bed, restless with excitement, he gulped down cold air as if to douse the oily flames rising in his esophagus. On top of everything, his nose felt runny and stuffed from the cold air; this was just how that terrible grippe and cough the month before had started, it had come on this swiftly. This is going to be one of those nights, he thought, when every minute passes like a drop of dripped water. But then his ingrained soldier’s habit of answering nerves and fear with sleep took over, and he didn’t even hear Bernardo come in.

When he wakes the next morning Capitán Elias is already onboard, so he can’t leave. His cold is worse, and he spends the day lost in a solitary storm of impatience, applying a new coat of paint in a corner of the deck that had been too hastily painted three months before and is already flaking with rust and salt. In faraway Brooklyn, he can hear church bells tolling.

“Are you trying to dig a hole with that paintbrush?”

Esteban looks up and sees the viejo standing over him with raised eyebrows and a silly expression on his face.

“Dreams of who have you flying so low, eh, chavalo?” Bernardo winks. “Una cierta manicurista?”

Esteban glares at him with a horrified expression, shakes his head, snorts, “Puta!” and returns his attention to his work. But he feels a pang of guilty affection when he looks up again and sees Bernardo shuffling away with slumped shoulders.

By the time Capitán Elias finally leaves the ship that afternoon, Esteban has resolved never to set foot on the
Urus
again. He puts Marta’s watch in his pocket and takes three dollars of the Parcheesi money from Tomaso Tostado. “Tell Panzón he can deduct it from what I’m owed.”

“Where are you going?” asks Tostado.

He can’t resist. “To get a haircut and a real job.” And he leaves the ship without saying good-bye to anyone else.

It is already dusk when he reaches the neighborhood of the unisex salon. On every side street, golden leaves drift down through the yellowish blue air behind the glare of the streetlamps. Now a pale, full moon hangs low in an unusually clear indigo sky, over the street, over the distant harbor. It’s probably an auspiciously beautiful night, he thinks, though he can’t smell or taste it because of his stuffed nose and cold. And this chilly air would probably feel good too, if only he were warmly dressed. The more he ponders his strategy, the more impossible it seems, and he finds himself just walking around, evading the street the salon is on: Silly viejo, he thinks, you just can’t walk in and talk someone into giving you a haircut for three dollars. He stands shivering from the cold on the avenue at the top of her street, looking down it at the light radiating over the sidewalk from the salon. The sight of that illuminated patch of sidewalk and the trash cans on the curb fills him with a confused emotion, both proprietary and foreboding.

Maybe if he just makes a sincere speech, appealing to her sense of solidarity with a potential new immigrant, she’ll convince her boss to cut his hair in exchange for sweeping up in front of the salon every day. Or he’ll promise to pay in full later when he has a job. He feels a tightening of his stomach just at the thought that Joaquina might step out of the salon any moment and come up this sidewalk with her determined stride of a doe trapped in big wooden shoes. Hola, he’ll say. Qué tal. Here I am, just walking around, looking for a job. How’s that Chucho?

He retreats down the avenue and stops in front of a tienda with flowers set out in plastic buckets on the sidewalk, some of them holding bouquets already wrapped in paper. A muchacho in a black jacket and baseball cap is sitting on a crate amidst the flowers and Esteban asks
him the price of a dozen roses in Spanish without even wondering if it’s the right language to use. The muchacho answers, “Ten dollars, jefe.”

“Puta. How many can I get for three dollars?”

“Three.”

“Give me one,” he says. “A red one.” One seems as meaningful as two or three, if he’s just trying to make her feel well disposed towards him. The muchacho shows him the sharp red rosebud he’s picked, and Esteban says, “No, that one.” He points down at a big, purplish red rose drooping on the end of its stem, wet and flagrant looking as a still-beating ox heart.

“Whatever you want, maestro.” The muchacho shrugs. “But this one is younger; it will start to open tomorrow and by then, yours will already be dead.”

Esteban tries to find the trick in this proposal. “Bueno,” he says finally with a relenting smile. “Can you wrap it in paper?”

The muchacho tears a sheet of silvery paper from a roll, spreads it on the table, and lays the budding rose on top. Then he pulls a handful of ferns from another bucket and starts arranging them around it—

“I didn’t ask for those!” blurts Esteban.

“Cálmate, güey.” The muchacho grins. “They’re free. It makes it classier. You want a ribbon?”

“Gracias.” His hand in his pocket has already peeled one dollar away from the other two and holds it ready in perspiring fingers; he wonders if he has a fever. The muchacho hands him the ribbon-tied paper cone with a single rose buried in ferns, and Esteban thanks him and pulls out the dollar.

“Good luck, maestro,” says the muchacho.

He turns down the street carrying the bouquet, infuriated over his thudding heart, scolding himself. Qué te pasa, güey? He stops in front of the salon’s lit-up window, the sign about the olive cat still taped inside the glass. He looks in but doesn’t see Joaquina. Mierda. Where is she? His heart stops its pounding like a suddenly switched-off engine; it’s as if he can feel quieted motor oil draining through his body into his boots. Maybe she’s in the back. There’s a man—Gonzalo, her boss, he
has to be—cutting a woman’s hair, tufts sprouting from clips all over her head. Gonzalo has shoulders as broad as an Olympic weight lifter’s under his white sweater, a waist as thin as a schoolgirl’s, and legs and nalgas so muscular they ripple and stretch his jeans while swaying back and forth to the music, a brassy salsa Esteban can hear playing inside. The back of his head is covered by flowing, wavy, black hair tied into a rough little ponytail. So, he thinks, Joaquina works in there with this cabrón, superwomanizer written all over him, eh? And what about that Chucho? Why doesn’t she step out through the curtain in back? Maybe she went out to get more pastelitos. His fingers tighten around the wrapped rose and fern stems; he can feel the paper dissolving in his sweaty grip. Gonzalo steps around the woman to start in on the other side of her head and looks right at him, scissors poised in the air. The hijueputa even has emeralds for eyes! Straight, noble nose, lips ripe with self-love, no? His face reddens as Gonzalo aims his green, curious stare right at him. Suddenly he sees himself as Gonzalo must see him, pathetic and scrawny as a street orphan. He turns and walks down the sidewalk. Chocho, now what? He wishes it was still seconds ago and instead of sealing his fate by walking away he’d just stayed there waiting, or stepped through the door and asked for Joaquina. But how can he do that now without looking ridiculous? He stops and looks back up the street at the light from the salon over the sidewalk. He feels like whipping the rose against a lamppost but stops himself. Idiot, he seethes, now what are you going to do?

He’d imagined that this Gonzalo was going to be old and lethargic like most barbers, full of heavy sighs and the usual listless complaints about the world, too bored by everything but his own fantasies about olive green cats to resist his and Joaquina’s arguments. That’s what he’d imagined, pues. But that vain human statue with a movie star face is never going to cut his hair for free. He walks all the way around the block and then down the salon’s street on the opposite sidewalk. Hurrying his steps as he draws even with the window, he looks over and sees Gonzalo still working on the woman’s hair and no Joaquina. He decides to use the rose’s paper wrapping to blow his stuffed nose and then decides not to.

This time he goes a long way down the avenue, until the commercial district is past and he’s walking along a low wall with a darkened, hilly park, vividly shadowed from moonlight, rising behind. And then he’s in another neighborhood, less lively with people and business. He turns back, and when he returns to the salon, the window is dark, the gate pulled down. He crosses the street and looks into the darkened salon through the gate and his image reflected in the glass. He takes out la Marta’s watch, tilts it in his palm to catch some of the street light. It’s nearly eight. He’s chilly and sweaty, his head aches, and his throat is starting to feel sore. He decides, I’m not going back to the ship no matter what.

Bernardo is heating cooking oil in the bottom of the pot for the rice. The stove’s butane canister ran out during the shrimp feast, eight nights ago now, but their officers haven’t replaced it: ever since, they’ve been cooking all their meals out on deck over a wood fire, a few iron bars laid over the flames, supported by bricks. He’s felt happy all day, knowing that Esteban has gone into Brooklyn again to see the manicurist, but inwardly disquieted too. He thinks, It’s like two parallel disappearances, the chavalo disappearing off the ship, into life and maybe even love, into his youth, and himself left behind, disappearing into, pues, into the other. Claro, an old man can’t help but be reminded of himself at a time like this.

When the oil is spitting and smoking, he bends to take the pot off the fire, holding it by rags. And just as he’s turning towards José Mateo so that he can pour in the rice he feels something brush with soft static against his calf and the soft, solid thump of the cat’s tail, and he turns with a breathless shout of “Desastres!” and his heels slide out on something slippery underneath and he lands sitting on the deck holding the pot tilted over his leg, the oil burning through a pant leg, through his skin, sizzling right down to the bone.