I had an appointment to keep with an old shipmate turned actor/playwright, name of Bertie Aiken — or Albert, as he now preferred to be known. Bertie was a debonair ladies’ man that the ladies would never have, a bully trap, black hair brushed back and a wily moustache planted above a lip that curled often.
He had on a revival of one of his plays, The Witches of New York, that I went to see at the Bowery Theatre. After lights out, we decided to go on a bender, accompanied by Bertie’s mate Tommy Nast.
A cartoonist by trade, Tommy spoke with a tiny German inflection and had his dark hair parted from the left with a sensuous wave. He was a little plump and wore a Colonel Custer beard. Tommy was prob’ly Bertie’s new mandrake, though I declined to ask.
We found a vacant table without chairs at a quaint drinking establishment called The Tituba, and did the perpendicular for the next few hours.
I do recall a discussion about that champion of women’s suffrage, Victoria Woodhull, who was running for U.S. president — and who’d been arrested the same day for publishing a supposedly obscene newspaper.
“Ahh, ‘tis bollocks,” Bertie announced over a cigar. “The woman is a self-righteous pain, but I respect her dedication, and the men of this fair city are running scared. They spread outrageous rumours that she’s having affairs and is a witch, and even portray her as Mrs. Satan.”
“Actually, that last one was mine, in Harper’s Weekly,” Nast said in his thinly guttural accent. “I thought the bat wings and goat horns suited her. But otherwise she has a sultry look in the caricature I did. I’d bed the woman.”
Bertie allowed a dark look to cross his face. “Then why the slander?”
“They paid me a pretty penny.”
“Slut.”
“Indeed!”
There was other bosh too, gossip about the recent visit to America of Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia and a witch trial in France I heard about when we stopped over in Calais. Also, griping about the third placed New York Mutuals, a baseball team Bertie and Tommy adored.
To be honest, I couldn’t give a flying fig.
I was more interested in the currently touring all-amateur English cricket team, and a certain prolific batsman named William Gilbert Grace — I’d hoped to con my way into one of the matches while I was in the ‘States, but no such luck. Not that I was overly fond of English cricket — I had in mind dissemination of the team for future bets. There was talk of our colonial team playing the English in a few years’ time, and nobody liked a studied whirl like me.
Drink followed drink, and it wasn’t long before I couldn’t see a hole in a ladder. Everything switched to blurry, and instead of Bertie and Tommy, I found myself beside some young saucebox with blonde curls hanging onto my ear, in a buggy behind a very fast horse.
I ended up at a dilapidated double-storey gaff on Manhattan’s extreme East Side, near the river and below East 14th Street.
I vaguely recall a circus or show too vulgar and degrading to describe here. More meaningful, I switched my blonde for Marie, a Creole woman with colour, all laminated dark skin, oiled midnight hair, and an outrageous Louisiana accent. She was twice my age. On the door of her room was a painted black circle, with outwardly reaching crescent moons to either side. There was an eight-spoked wagon wheel on the wall.
I have flashes of memory of the night thereafter: I woke up bewildered when the woman plucked a few hairs out of my scalp, and sometime later I looked over and saw her flicking through the book I kept in my pockets, then carefully tore free a page. I passed out before I could complain. Still later, I’m sure she was wrestling with a black rooster, but that could have been a drunken fancy.
Next day, I ought to have crept out silently and licked my wounds. Instead, I made a ruckus, woke her up, announced she was hideous, and strode from the house onto the cobblestones, my chin held high. Lord knows why — she was apparently precisely my style when I was maggoted.
I approached the Battery and gazed out at all the sailed ships in the harbour, colours flapping in a light breeze and tiny individuals working the decks like busy ants. Suckers. Then I made my way down to the employment wharf. Any ship heading Britain-way would do me fine.
I signed up with a two-masted brigantine, the Marie Céleste, one hundred feet from bow to stern. Although it had a French name it was in fact an American vessel. They had a crew of six, but were desperate for a seventh, especially with my kind of ‘experience’. They asked no questions and offered good terms.
I decided to get a morsel to eat before we sailed, but as I folded up the freshly signed contract a grim-looking beggar right there accosted me on the street.
“Morning to ye, shipmate, morning!”
“Hardly your shipmate — shipmate.” I smiled nastily.
“Anything down there about your soul?” he asked, foul breath trailing my way, as he pointed at the papers I’d tucked into my breast pocket.
I wasn’t in the mood. My head was swimming still. “Push off, mate.”
“Oh, perhaps you hav’n’t got any.”
“Prob’ly not.”
“Well, well, what’s signed, is signed; and what’s to be, will be; and then again, perhaps it won’t be, after all.”
“Whatever.” The man was talking in inane circles.
“Anyhow, it’s all fixed and arranged a’ready by that witch o’ yours.”
“Right you are.” I was gazing out at the ships. What a peaceful, glorious sight.
“May the ineffable heavens bless ye; I’m sorry I stopped ye, but take this.” The man pressed something cold into my hand. “Old Elijah will see you through. As I say to ye, what’s to be, will be; and then again, perhaps it won’t be, after all.”
God, he was doing my head in — but with that last bit, he stumped away, making a hell of a racket on the flagstones. I hadn’t noticed the ivory peg leg before now. I looked at the object I held in my fingers: a fisherman’s knife, the word Gilliat scratched into its surface with a childish hand.
Not a bad piece of work, and I’d misplaced mine the week before in some alley thief’s belly. It would need a decent scrub, though, to remove the stench of the man who’d left it with me.
The ship departed the next morning. We had passengers, the captain’s wife and child, and an old seadog member of the crew did the usual song-and-dance about women on board being bad luck.
For a week we sailed the Atlantic while I found ways to avoid actual work. Early one morning, when a storm haunted the horizon, the captain — who’d started to suspect my true nature — sent me up the mast to the narrow crow’s nest. Perfect. I settled in there for a read.
I had an 1871 copy of Vingt mille lieues sous les mers in my coat pocket, the book that Creole ladybird had been handling, with illustrations by Édouard Riou and Alphonse de Neuville. My favourite part was when the octopus attacks the Nautilus and scoffs down a crewmember.
In the English versions, it’s misleadingly translated as a giant squid, but in the original French version of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, it’s definitely “poulpe”, or octopus.
I spoke a fair portion of the lingo — put that down to a season employed on a French trawler in the Caribbean — and I’d nicked the book from the boson. I figured it’d fetch a coin or two, but had become attached to the tome over the past few months. It was my sole long-term possession aside from my hat and a lucky ducat with which I refused to part.
The picture by Neuville, of Nemo, arms crossed at the huge oval observation window, staring out at the giant octopus — well, that page was missing. Curious. It must’ve been what the Creole scrag tore out.
What with the gentle swaying up there on my perch and the warm sunlight, I presume I fell asleep. When I woke, it was late afternoon. The silence below forewarned me. The ship was deserted — the captain’s woman and child were also gone — and a lifeboat was missing. God knows what had happened. I could’ve weighed anchor or gone looking, but that’d be too much effort
for a solitary crewmember like me.
Never one to put off taking advantage of the moment, I broke open a keg of rum, found some limes and mint sprigs in the galley, and made a succession of mojitos. At least I wouldn’t be getting scurvy.
I grabbed a bag of coins, a pistol and the ship’s papers from the captain’s cabin and began putting together differently constructed paper aircraft, tossing them into the headwind to see which design was most effective.
When I ran out of papers, I accidentally knocked over the compass and it broke on the deck. In my drunkenness I believed I could repair it — all I needed was a key component from the clock. Instead of fixing the compass, the clock stopped working.
I was drunk as a skunk and singing a sea shanty —“Cape Cod boys don’t got no sleds/Haul away, haul away (yip!)/They slide down hills on codfish heads/And we’re bound away for Australia,” along with much humming of the lines I’d forgotten —so I tied a rope, the peak halyard, around my waist, just in case. I didn’t trust my sea legs in this state.
Neither should I have trusted my sea fingers, since the moment I fell overboard the knot came unravelled and I plummeted into the dark water unhindered.
The keel of a ship slices overhead — always a portent of bother — and then, after the keel passes, something falls into the sea.
For a moment there are a million bubbles and the water is too disturbed to make out the object. A sneaking suspicion crosses my mind that this may be a net, so I hang back.
But instead of coils of rope assembled by overburdened fishermen’s wives, I discover the under-half of a human form. The legs dance a merry caper, and they’re sorely tempting ones at that. Easy enough to reach out, embrace, squeeze a little, and then yank. Holding onto said conquest, swimming down into the ebony depths — a blackness aided and abetted by my ink sac — to a place of privacy, perhaps under an outcrop of coral, there to snack.
I am feeling rather peckish after my evening constitutional.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, what do you expect? That I’ll stick to a steady diet of vegetarian fodder like seaweed? And while I’m fond of my animal protein, I’m sick to death of clams, worms, prawns and crabs. As for sea snails, otherwise known as the popcorn of the deep sea, I’ll slap (eight times) anyone who again offers up this treat — regardless of added-extra condiments.
I sometimes discover an ailing gull or aged albatross floating about above, but they’re either chewy or a little off.
This individual splashing about before me looks to be in his prime.
And, to be completely honest, I’m in the mood for a bit of grandstanding. Let’s see those pesky squid and cuttlefish carry off someone this large with equal finesse.
I feel the rapid beat of three hearts. I’m excited, and it’s been an age since I felt this way. At least three months, not that I’m counting. Well, actually, I am. When you have a life expectancy guaranteed to make most self-aware species fret — the oldest octopus I ever met reached five years of age before she carked it — you tend to do a bit of repetitive calculating in groups of eight, with two eyes firmly held on a blinkered future. Right now I’m sitting on four years.
Anyhow, back to the matter overhead. I manoeuvre into opportune position and expel a jet of water to begin my ascent. While I bide my time, I’m not about to let this delicacy off the hook, so to speak.
One of my eyes dips above the surface. The ship is far away now, but I see the name Marie Céleste on the rear end of her. Then I get my bearings.
There’s a thick fog, yet I can make out mangroves not so far away, leading to hills covered in lush tropical trees. Either British or French Guiana, I’m not certain which — all these steamy, inhospitable islands look the same. I decide it is the former one, for convenience’s sake.
I turn my eye to the swimmer. The proximity to that coast means he’s probably a local. I loathe British food. But, given the ship’s moniker, he might be from France — indeed I hope so. I do love my French cuisine.
The man hasn’t seen me. He’s staring all about, like he’s looking for something, but the ship is gone and he’s all alone. He’s not a bad-looking thing — bearing a certain harsh attractiveness to him that reminds me of a German actor I also enjoyed named Andrews Engelmann. This man, however, is overacting. He’s panicking and splashing about and it’s exhausting to observe.
Let’s cut the struggles short, shall we?
I unfurl one of my legs, since I deduce this is all it will take.
I direct the leg to coil itself around the man’s right thigh and calf, and he freezes for an instant before the panic truly begins. This doesn’t matter. I have a superb grip and propel myself to the shallow seabed with my prize. The man writhes and twists with a vigour that’s tiring. This forces me to employ a second arm, and then a third, and it’s difficult to swim with the remaining five. Somehow his hand pulls a little gun free but that’s not going to work down here, and anyhow he drops it. Silly boy. His fortitude is on the decline and the antics vanish as we pass the wreckage of a large ship with the faded moniker Preussen painted on its stern.
There’s a cave ahead, full of dark shadows. Perfect. A grotto it is for some gourmet grub.
Months pass.
I’ve come to call the cave home, and if I had opposable thumbs I might make a tapestry that reads “Home, Sweet Home”, or “An Octopus’ Grotto is his Castle”, or some such nonsense. Perhaps I could train the chromatophores in my skin to do the signage for me, instead of bothering with trivial workings like camouflage.
On one of my morning jaunts I spy someone diving, poking about in a recent wreck.
I have the taste for fine food in my belly as I ramble closer. I think I’m there with an epicurean’s intent to inspect the goods, but the craving overwhelms my aged senses. Within moments I have the man in my embrace, I’m tearing off the mask, looking at features that strike me as very Rock Hudson. It’s important to feast on attractive things and I’m enamoured.
I gather up this prince and pull him along to the grotto, my castle, where the first thing he sees is the polished-up skeleton of my last big meal, the swimmer, sitting cross-legged next to a sack of gold coins and a knife said meal had been carrying.
Rock Hudson’s face, sans diving mask, grimaces, and before I know it he has scooped up the knife and he turns on me. What I do observe in that brief transition from attacker to victim is that the blade has a serrated edge and the name Gilliat inscribed across its shiny silver surface.
Right then and there, like some absurd epiphany, I realize the jig is up. Am I going to perish? Well, are Dover’s cliffs still white?
Seconds before he lashes out with the knife I have time to address a few points. At least the man isn’t Japanese — he’ll just kill me and be done with it. Europeans in these parts didn’t indulge in eating octopus flesh. In the Greek islands, in all likelihood, I’d be pegged up on a clothesline to dry out in the sun, while in Japan I’d end up still squirming on a plate, to be eaten with shabby disposable wooden chopsticks.
Embarrassing stuff.
Here, I’ll have a more peaceful requiem.
I don’t even bother hitting him with the ink.
Zigzag is a story I fiddled over for some time, and in an early incarnation last year I worked with comicbook artist Drezz Rodriguez to make it into a five-page visual yarn that’s to be published in the Tobacco-Stained Sky anthology.
My favourite handgun (the British Webley-Fosbery) is involved, the same pistol that killed Sam Spade’s partner Miles Archer in The Maltese Falcon, and the one that’s so pivotal in both Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat and One Hundred Years of Vicissitude. If you want to see what it looks like, check out the comic included herein (Get Busy).
After working with Drezz I buried the written version.
This year I decided to revive it, gave it a major overhaul, and submitted it to the Slit Your Wrists (SYW!) crew for their baptismal anthology Shock & Appall.
Zigzag
While I whist
le Cole Porter’s Who Wants to be a Millionaire, pitch wandering between Frank Sinatra’s version and Bill Oddie’s, I’m cleaning this bastard like there’s neither tomorrow nor the day after. Mind you, it’s not the song I try to scour — that’s accidental — but the babe in my grip.
She’s ancient, older even than the Porter ditty (scribbled down in 1956 for some Hollywood musical), and likely hasn’t been used in fifty-odd years. Maybe more.
There are better, more functional gats that’ve been churned out on rotating industrial sushi belts since this one first reflected the light of day, or night-time luminous-tube signage, on the metallic surface of her skin. She’s an oddball piece that should be in a bloody museum, collecting dust in temperature-controlled bliss — preferably to be seen rather than heard.
Yet here she was, a little the worse for wear, in the ongoing process of being debased by the elements, and I was doing a spit and polish minus the saliva.
Don’t ask how many minutes had passed, but I’d started out with a cloth soaked in sewing-machine oil that I lobbed over my shoulder once it turned a disturbing combination of black and rust-red, a gritty feeling to the touch.
Next up I used a fat pipe-cleaner, pumping this in and out and then a wee bit more for good measure, twisting and turning, doing ninety-degree rotations with what began as deft flicks of the wrist but degenerated into something akin to a rheumatic swirl. I wasn’t sure it was the best tool — surely there were more professional ones — but the pipe-cleaner served its nefarious purpose and the old girl was looking dolled-up by the moment.
Then I swabbed a fresh rag with more of that machine oil and wiped down the exterior surfaces, giving them the kind of love and attention I’d never wasted on any flesh-and-blood woman.
“She’s looking spic-and-span, I’ll give you that much,” I hear his voice praise from the direction of the couch, on the other side of the coffee table from where I’m seated. Focused on my task as I am, I don’t bother with a glance or time-waster like that. The job before me is all that matters. I’m busy caressing the zigzag grooves on the cylinder.
The Condimental Op Page 3
