Read Online The Ordinary Seaman by Francisco Goldman - Free Book Online Page A

one hand hatcheting up and down, his vivid eyebrows fusing close together over his suddenly narrowing eyes, and sometimes, when he seems excited about the point he’s about to make, he pauses, then launches it in a surprisingly high, almost whinnying voice while his eyebrows arch up too. A few times el Capitán has turned to whichever crewmen might be standing nearby to translate what he’s been telling Mark and to ask what they think, and then laughed at Mark in a delightedly mocking way, while Mark scowled and rolled his eyes or grinned with embarrassment. Esteban was standing nearby the time Capitán Elias said that aboutwomen not wanting to hear a man’s resentments, jealousies, and crazy bad thoughts: “Mark has to learn not to whine in front of his women, no matter how much they love him, am I right, Esteban?” el Capitán asked. And Esteban taciturnly agreed, then spent the day pondering the advice. Though it didn’t seem to apply to any way he’d ever yet behaved, it seemed worth remembering. There’s something very unrelaxed and unhappy about el Primero, even though he smiles a lot and doesn’t ever seem mean-spirited the way el Capitán occasionally does.
    Capitán Elias keeps access to the bridge, officers’ quarters, and wings locked at night too, though they’ve all been up there in the day, where everything has been stripped bare of the teak paneling and brass fittings Bernardo says would usually cover the walls of the officers’ quarters on such a ship. Capitán Elias and Mark keep a table, a few chairs, a radio-cassette player, and two mattresses up on the bridge, though they never stay the night. The only remnant of the officers’ quarters’ presumed former luxury are three black-and-white tiled, nearly square, sunken bathtubs, each in its own cabinetlike little room. These are Japanese, Capitán Elias has explained, they work something like steam baths. Let’s fix the electrical problem, muchachos; once we have plumbing again we’ll get these baths going and then we can all sink our bodies down into those boxes of hot water and steam, have Japanese baths. Won’t that, el Capitán adds in English, exaggerating his usual accent, be bloody fucking marvelous. So the ship’s previous owners and officers, according to Capitán Elias, were Japanese. That explains the leftover sacks of roach-infested rice and the musty box of chopsticks they found in the galley, the rotted crates of rusting sardine cans left behind in a deep corner of the hold.
    From the starboard bridge wing they can see all the way across the harbor to the opposite shore: ships and fragile-looking cargo cranes in the ocean-hazed distance, oil refinery and storage tanks, factory smokestacks, bridges, church steeples, smoky hills beyond; looking south over waterfront warehouse and terminal roofs and trees, they can see the upper portion of the Statue of Liberty out in the harbor, green, oxidized arm in the air.
    The first time he climbed up there for a look Bernardo said, “When that statue walks, chavalos, this ship will sail.”
    The viejo never passes up an opportunity to remind them.
    Throughout the hot summer months, until just a few weeks ago, noisy groups of teenage morenos often came late at night to sit at the end of the pier, under the
Urus’s
prow. Los blacks was what Capitán Elias called them, and soon most of the crew began calling them that too. They were the only people during all those months that the crew saw from the ship at night, though sometimes cars drove into the lot behind the grain terminal’s ruins, stayed awhile, drove off into their own wobbling tunnels of light. Usually los blacks had two or more music boxes, all tuned to the same radio station; they drank beer from quart bottles and passed marijuana cigars, listening to their booming, shouted music. Sitting well out of sight up on the darkened deck, the crew always felt aroused by the sweetly pungent smoke—sometimes marijuana smelled like