I’ll make this stinking bastard talk!
He hunches on the bench, riveted to the spot. Hardheaded.
“Beat it!…” he grumbles. “Beat it! Shit!”
“Nobody’s beating it! Start talking!”
I stay put.
He fidgets in place, wriggling his ass over towards the counter. I won’t have any of that.
“Keep still, Prospero!”
A fraction of an inch! I whack him across the face with the siphon.
Good! He got the message.
“Well?”
“Well, OK, here it is then! You asked for it! Don’t come crying to me later!”
In a sweat, he makes up his mind.
“No, nobody’s crying here… we’re all ears!”
“OK, Jovil’s your man… Cannon Dock… Tell him I sent you… Cannon Dock…”’
“Sure about that? For certain? Jovil? Cannon?”
I didn’t want any snags!
“Don’t worry… You’re coming from Prospero’s… At customs keep your lips buttoned… play it safe… Maybe he’s still taking people on…”
“Where to?”
“La Plata!”
“Hot damn!”
“Like that, all three of you?”
“Let’s have a look!”
I wanted him to show us where to go through the window… so we could find it outside.
“The masts sticking out! Oh! What a pain in the ass!”
I was giving him a rough time.
“Out there on the Millwall… the masts…”
It was Cannon Dock…
“Sticking out…”
I had twenty-twenty!
“Ask for Jovil! Prospero! He’ll know right off.”
“So, anyway, tell me, is it some sailboat?”
“You expecting the Lusitania or something?”
“What’ll we do on board?”
“Play cards!”
I wanted details.
“What’s the name of this boat of yours?”
“Kong Hamsün!… ”
“Skipper Jovil… Kong Hamsün…”
I repeated the info myself.
“Hey, what if we get thrown out?”
“You’ll see!”
“No, you’re the one who’ll see – us again, duckie!”
I didn’t let up.
“Ah! You’re a pain in the ass!”
I was disgusting him.
“OK! OK! Don’t get miffed! We’ll race over!”
I make the girl walk ahead of us… I slip out on the q.t., shuffling sidelong. Then slam the door, we’re outside.
“Hop to it! Cannon Dock!”
First, we’ve got to find the ferry, the one that crosses the locks… we run smack into it! Chug! Chug! Chug!… Heading to the other shore! We hit the ground running… five minutes straight… like mad!…
Virginia’s a little short of breath… Sosthène’s having a hard time because of his workout the other day!… Cursing everything… scuttling like a crab… his ass sideways… his bumps, black-and-blue bruises, scabs all over his body… the horrible Piccadilly shellacking! He’s bitching… moaning!…
“Go back!” I yell… “Go take a rest!…”
“There they are, son! Hey! There they are!…”
It’s true! I hadn’t seen them!… We’re standing underneath!
Ah! You bet! Ah! such superduper vessels! What stems! What sides! What magic! Ah! The wonderful ships! Lined up down the dock two, three, four, sitting pretty, gigantic, stem to stern!
They take up almost the whole expanse of water, all Cannon Dock, from jib to prow, towering hulks, with soaring yards, from sky to stern, from one side to the other, trembling silhouettes in the mirror of the basin, immense branches, jutting bowsprits, topsails of adventure, grazing the rooftops, looming high above the warehouses.
We walk down along the dock, wind our way from one mooring to the next…
Under the shadow of a prow, everything grovels, burrows down in its ugliness, withers, nothing stands in comparison, it shrivels, water rat, man rat, nothing competes, amazed, sorry-looking, peters out, disappears, little rat.
The magnificently soaring stems! Mercy on us!
We roamed around a little more, touching the ropes, the anchors, a giant’s earrings, charm bracelets, colossal stoppers, lacework of algae, green, blue, red, at the end of the chain, finery of the deep, gods of terror, wigs.
We went over to read the names, in gold, yellow and red on the shields… The Draggar, the Norodosky… Ah! The Kong Hamsün!… Ah! Immediately I’m all admiration! I’m thrilled! What a piece of work! I touch it! The vastness, the power of the huge side! Rough! Brown! Wood and salt! Sea spray foams! The side rises… higher… higher still… exhilarating! Let’s dash to the prow! What defiant bravado! The prow! What majesty! Carved design! The enormous bearded guy in his crown towered over the stem! In a breastplate! The works! Sword in fist! He orders, commands! The waves! It’s him! King Hamsün! Curly haired! Ringlets! Beard! Green eyes! All freshly painted! A magnificent ship poised to glide across the sea! Cast off! Cast off! Not yet? What a throng! What toil! The bridges mobbed! On every level! Climbing, plummeting! A hundred… a thousand sweaty shipmates… Zooming around, whipping all over the place… A flood of dockers… spilling over the gangways between cabins… lugging barrels and casks! Cotton, huge enormous bobbins, three, six at a time… jam-packing their holds… whisky, brandy for the tropics… wire for down under… I nab a crotchety geezer sitting on a stone post… He gives me a foggy look… I shake him…
“Jovil? Skipper Jovil?…”
“Jovil!” he goes to me. “There!” Pointing. Then he spits. The guardrail above us… the man standing there leaning over… in the cap… beet-red face… the hollering hole… that’s him! He points him out again! That’s him all right! He’s yelling, screaming his head off at that very moment… at the crane… wants it to start up… get “unhunged”… That’s Jovil the skipper, all right, that raving madman!
“There! There!” the old man keeps insisting! That’s him!
The roaring skipper booms so loudly that his voice echoes way back in the warehouses… and the whole wharf reverberates, all Cannon Dock is set quaking! The way he howls to his men… He’s a raging beast! Insults for all around! Great Satan! What on earth! Whorehouse! Christ in heaven! Dogs!… All hell’s breaking loose something horrible!
And yet the whole area round about is hopping with activity, no slacking off on the job, swivelling, hoisting in the bulwarks, from every line, stuff pouring down in every direction, sweating and slaving from upper deck to stern, oh heave that bail! This way! Turn around! There! Torrents of curses sweeping down into the holds! The small trucks at dock level jam-crushed! Racing like mad! Metal crunch! Smash-up! More labourers gathering, pouring out of every crevice, yellow, black, pale as ghosts, in frock coats, stark naked, without a stitch, hunting for jobs, under umbrellas, straw hats, start today, for one and six an hour, a real working-over, up and down the ship! Whoever hangs toughest wins! From every side street, Prospero’s customers turning up for work.
The saddest thing in the world is all the lines holding down the ship at both ends – huge as it is, paunch bulging, it’s still light as air and would soar off, a bird, despite the heavy-duty cargo in its wooden belly, crammed to bursting; the wind singing in the topmasts would whisk it away by its boughs, even just as is, in dry dock, without sails; it’d be off if the men weren’t hell-bent on holding it down with a hundred thousand lines, pulling hard till they’re red in the face; it’d pull away from the docks, bare as a bone, and take to the heights, sail off, flying through the clouds, rising to the very top of the sky, a harp come alive in the oceans of azure; that’s the way it’d set sail, the spirit of travel, absolutely indecent – just shut your eyes and you’d be swept off for a long time, off into the vast open space of a magical life free of care, a passenger of the world’s dreams!
It’s the lines, the cables binding,
holding the ship down all over, that’s what’s fouling up all the traffic on the dock, tripping everybody up, makes them fall flat on their faces, and Skipper Jovil hollering his lungs out. They wait till the very last second to cast off, the ship tests the wind, sails away smoothly… If this isn’t a miracle, what is?
Ah! I’m happy only when I’m around ships, it’s in my blood, and I ask for nothing more.
I was bellowing all this over at Sosthène, giving the skipper a run for his money. I wanted Sosthène to share my enthusiasm. At moments when I least expect it, these fits of enthusiasm sweep over me, I listen to myself in surprise shooting my mouth off. I was forgetting the reason we’d come… namely, to skip the country…
It goes right to your head, you can’t resist it, the smell for starters, the smell of hemp and caulking.
“Come on now, call him!”
He shook me. My eyes had gone blurry under the influence of the spell, the place, the situation… embarking for Fantasy Land! I couldn’t bring myself back down to earth, use the fraction of common sense at my disposal. I just stood there goo-goo-eyed against the hull, I really felt like kissing the planking, the whole big reeking scuttle, its coal tar, its halyard, its creaking pulleys – you name it – its colossal cauldron on the coals, I’d have gulped down the whole concoction, the rat stew and the dancing babble, the lapping current, farandoling around the hull, steady rush of ripples from every corner of the dock, heading towards its big rough belly, I’d have drunk that down too! Oh! Such huge love! I was absolutely crazy about its whistling song, breezes seized in the upper strings, more and more fragile, rigging needles, lace, from topsail yard to topsail yard, boldly gusting, from azure to azure!…
It’s all too much! Your soul veers up and away…
But Sosthène snaps me back to reality.
“Yoo-hoo! Go ahead!”
He yanks me out of the spell.
I bawl in turn: “Jovil! Skipper Jovil!”
I call over to him: “Is it you, man?”
“Yeah, my dear! Yeah! Wah! Wah!”
He burped out his answer.
He leans over the planking, thrusts his body down so far his mug’s sticking right in our faces.
“Yeah?”
He’s got just three teeth left in his kisser.
He cranes down a little more to get a better gander at us… stretches out his ostrich neck…
“Jovil? Jovil?” I repeat.
“Yeah! Yeah!”
Rich vocabulary. Another guy pokes up over the planking, another red mug right above us… But this one keeps his trap shut… Our man’s running the show… Now they’re both spitting… all around us… humongous gobs… I step back… they go into fits over the way I dodge the spray. They jabber in gobbledegook, their speech starting down in their throats, gurgling up in small hiccups, sing-songing, then running out their noses. It’s Swedish, according to Sosthène, from time to time they talk in bubbles, it’s the fish side of language… it’s like English, but not so bouncy, so frisky, more quack than chirp…
Roar! Roar! Two blasts! They burp together… Two minds at work…
“What do you want?” he finally asks.
I motion that we want to come aboard… to sail away, all three of us… One! Two! Three!
That tickles his funny bone, he’s hysterical again, and everybody around him, the whole crew. They’re hardy-har-haring so hard their backslaps could kill a bull.
“Come on!”
I’m a laugh a minute for them! I stumble, slog away – what an obstacle course! Just approaching the ladder is a hectic whirl, a gruelling feat. I nearly topple fifteen-twenty times under the torrents of girders, hovering and waltzing everywhere you look, teetering, bousing, hallucinating, a raft’s beams! Jutting bowsprits, huge hammocks of stuff, crates floating through the air, prodigious playthings, a flying bazaar, grand pianos for the tropics, the whole shebang screeching, veering down into the storerooms, pitching, plummeting, crashbanging into the holds. Boom! I worm my way amid the insults. I reach Jovil.
I’m standing right in front of him, he totally ignores me. He climbs on top of a barrel, from which vantage he towers over the scene. He thunders orders, roars into the masts, the capstans, his voice echoing through the clouds, raging at the sailors heave-hoing, tautening coils, dangling from lines, whisking through empty air, on pulleys, grazing past, snatching in mid-flight, yaw sail! Brailing up sail in the sunshine!
“Down halyard… And one!… And two… Halyard down!…”
The sail goes limp! Snaps! Flag-waves! The wind kicks in! A work gang ten-twelve strong fastens the yard, pulls down hard, sweating like horses as they explode in one titanic uuh! The large royal sail gives way, pivots on one wing… hauls on! The other! Collapses! Relieved! Crumples in a heap on the bridge, oozes flat… an enormous pancake!… The men grumble, charge something horrible… a ferocious racket… the whole crew pounces on top… belly-flopping, rolling around, squeezing out the last drop at the command: “Kiop! Kiop! Kiop! Kiop!” Jovil up on his barrel keeping time, “Kiop! Kiop!” Thirty-five strong hell-bent on twisting up the tough fabric… on wrestling under control the gigantic folds, kneading, coiling…
“Heave ho! Heave ho!” A furious effort! They all yell at every “Kiop! Kiop!” to make it shrink, wrap tighter than before… roll itself into a monster cigarette… just like that, dazzling on the bridge… white… Ah! Got it!… Ah! Solid job! Jovil’s proud as hell! He locks his hands over his head like a winning champ!
“Come on!” he calls me… “Come on!… What you want?”
What do I want?
His mind’s back on me.
“To go to La Plata!”
I snap at the opportunity. Lay my cards right on the table. I’d like to set sail pronto, Sosthène, Virginia and me. Not a minute to waste. I want to spell it out to him up real close. I stand on tiptoe. He bends down, does his best. I want to whisper in his ear. We have some trouble catching each other’s drift because of the din all around, plus the broken English we’re jabbering, especially him, take it from me, I’m not just trying to blow my own horn… he’s impossible to understand, every word’s a hiccup, he snorts, spit-gobs, starts over from the top… We’re going nowhere fast… He pulls his pipe out of his mouth.
Up real close like this, my nose in his mug, he’s a whole lot more gruesome-looking, missing all his upper teeth, which is what makes him splutter so badly. Two scars on his left cheek, crosswise, and one hell of a cross it is. His dangling sleeve is a wooden arm that ends in a metal hook. I show him my hand too, the way it dangles lifelessly, we’ve both got our share of knocks. In his case it wasn’t the war, but a yard, he explains, acting out the accident, how it crushed his arm just above his elbow. This detail brings us closer. We can really open up to each other. He lets me understand how strong he is with his hook… how he can lift anything he wants… how I ought to get one put on… just like his… it’d do me more good than a flabby arm… which I really ought to get chopped off… it’d make my life a whole lot easier… To drive home the point he leans over, hooks… a cannonball that weighs a good 220 pounds… just whisks it up, whoosh! Light as a feather! It knocks my socks off! What a Hercules! We trade compliments… I marvel. I congratulate him… But I’d like him to drop me a wee hint about my scheme… like whether he’ll take us on as extra hands?
“Prospero!” I whisper… “Prospero!”
My tipster… I point towards the canteen out there… on the other side of the river…
“Prospero says we can… go… with you!… America!”
I made motions, far! far! farther still! For ever! Oh! Jeez! Just takes those few words to send him back into hysterics. This works Sosthène up… “Voyage! Voyage!” He gesticulates, wants to help me… he shouts in his falsetto…
“Ocean cruise!… Long course!…”
And then the ship out at sea… the sound of the waves… Swoosh! Swoosh!… He does an imitation… he rolls… pitches… paints a picture of the voya
ge for Jovil… clues him in on what we’re after… “Voyash!… Voyash!…” He caught on! Old beet-face! Red cap!… It fires up the pair of them! “Voyash! Voyash!” They’re heehawing like jackasses… Why?… Plain morons. They show me the hold down below… running crosswise to the bridge… a vast gaping hole… an enormous pit… “Voyash!… Voyash!…” They’re whacking each other’s sides laughing so hard, everybody’s just so damn funny! Right then a billow of flour explodes from the dark depths… a hurricane!… A group achoo!…
“Voyash! Voyash!” The animals bark, chuckle, stomp up a storm. A hardee-har-har jig. Jovil’s in hysterics more than anybody… His fit of laughter spills over into song, mouth wide open… wide… our “Voyash” craze! What clowns we are, real comedians.
“There! There!…” He shows us again… the hold down so deep. He does a little jig up on his barrel, he’s laughing so uncontrollably. He tap-dances through his moans… in real pain… one more second he’ll burst… He calls everybody over to see us! Featherbrains, unbelievable creatures! It’s too much for one man! He booms out to all quarters, from the top of the masts to the bottom of the holds! Everybody back on deck! Hustle over on the double! The crew trundles along, drags their feet, grumbles and groans, and then the rush is on… from cables, from gangways, a steady stream, caulkers, gofers, cabin boys, coolies…
From the rigging, the wind sails, they come dropping, tumbling down, a mob at the loudmouth’s feet… the deafening din breaks off, all the slamming and banging, the storm deep down in the hull… war hammers… You couldn’t hear yourself think…
They keep piling in, Blacks, Chinks, hairy things, hanging from every spar, dangling in bunches from the foresails, monkeys. From the dock in waves… heave ho! A gurgling ooze! Men floating along, clinging to rafts, hoisting themselves up on the bridge, the repair caulkers… gripping the planks, crawling up close for a laugh, flocking around that big fat bastard… up there on his barrel jabbering, treating us like total assholes! When he does his ludicrous rendition of us begging, everybody shits themselves… nearly pass out… staggering into each other they’re guffawing so hard… It’s too funny! Too witty!… At this point the scrawny carrot-top stumbles into us… wobbly on his feet… reeling… choking on his laughter… holding his sides… slips… overboard! The drink sweeps him away! The screwy rotten jerk-off! Swings level to a cask… Whack!… His face in smithereens… bleeding everywhere… a sheet of red spreading… Ah! All just too hilarious! I’ve got to laugh too… the stinking bum’s still at it… another round of gags… About how we want to go to America, fearless globetrotters that we are! And brave the sea and waves for two shillings fifty! He points out to them how shrewd we are… They heehaw, bop up and down on their butts they’re so crazy in stitches. Ah! They’re having a ball at our expense. They shout over to me, meowing… barking… how about going down into the hold with the darling?… Mimicking… Meanwhile Jovil’s still a ball of fire up there on his barrel, a real hit, gesticulating, throwing out his arms, whirling his hook stump right above our heads. I think that he wants to see all three of us hang… that they’re sick and tired of looking at us… Bam! He stops dead. He starts humming… awaiting the verdict. The jury is the mob of sailors around us… squatting on their heels… the crew who’ll give thumbs up or down… they grumble, roll, reel on their asses… Deadlocked. I catch on that what they’re deciding is not whether to hang us, but to take us on or not… They spit, bitch, can’t be bothered…
London Bridge Page 49
