The Perfidious Parrot

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  One of the world’s paradises, soon to be under the Spanish cross on which hung the Spanish Jesus.

  Spanish forces would annihilate the natives but a project of that magnitude, Skipper Peter said, seemingly sober, speaking articulately, takes time and effort. Father Ambagt, peering around his swollen, blood-red nose, compared the changed situation with Rome, not built in a day, not torn down in a day either. The Calusas did not agree with being killed off. They shot poison arrows from the mangroves. Camouflaged canoes floated quietly through narrow swamp channels, before their crews jumped the invaders. Nude Calusa women offered fruit juices to lure steel-helmeted Spanish sailors.

  Young Ambagt took his guests to the Rodney’s bridge. A ship-shaped icon showed on the computer’s large screen. The moving icon was the Rodney herself, stationary dots were reefs, stationary lines were sandbanks. Flashing arrows were dangerous currents. Seventeenth-century sailors only saw the sea’s surface but the Calusas knew where hidden coral reefs waited to rip vessels apart. The Calusas, dressed up in captured Spanish clothes, entrapped ships, by waving flags, or with lanterns at night.

  But the Calusas were still primitives, Skipper Peter said, excitedly waving his tumbler. They weren’t good at handling firearms. They didn’t adapt to new values.

  “Lack of values,” the commissaris said.

  “Exactly.” Carl said. He raised his hand didactically. “Primitives cannot look beyond their own morals. Faced with change they stay stuck with obsolete codes.” Calusas still believed in pacts. Pacts, agreements, honor, that sort of thing works when there is plenty of space and resources, but time was running out for that. “Drop all that garbage when a million Spanish are trying to get in. If not …”

  “… you will be tortured, raped, and killed,” grinned Skipper Peter.

  “Fifteen thousand Calusas,” Carl said, “that’s all we are talking about here, just a little tribe with painted faces, doing a bit of hey-ho around the bonfire, so what you do is invite the dimwits for Big Macs with Mayo and you fill them up with mass-produced chemical hootch and then you beat them all to death.”

  “Leaving some of the shapelier ones,” grinned Skipper Peter.

  “If you must,” frowned Carl.

  “After use, they go too,” Skipper Peter said, winking, toasting, smacking, spilling liquor and snacks.

  Carl addressed the commissaris. “The Calusas came to an end but ships kept coming and we kept the wrecking habit. Why do away with a good thing?” He smiled. “Right?”

  “All that useless stupidity.” The commissaris looked at the fading island. “And we could all have had such a good time. Pool shamanic and western medical knowledge of birth control and euthanasia. Keep the population level. Fifteen thousand Calusas, fifteen thousand visitors. Oysters Rockefeller around the campfire. Blossoming shrubs. Cuban coffee and cigars. Nuzzling under the palm trees. Music. Singing the Reds.”

  “The Reds?” Carl asked.

  “The Blues,” the commissaris said, “might not have happened.”

  Grijpstra forgot his nausea for the moment. He said he liked the Blues, even if only for contrast. Who needs being happy all the time? Who wants to keep singing the Reds around campfires, even while nuzzling firm-fleshed primitives?

  The commissaris was about to mention the possibility of going beyond the duality of being massacred by mutual egotism and being bored by bourgeois’s get-togetherism when the sea became rougher and Grijpstra started retching again.

  “Really, Henk,” the commissaris said.

  Carl Ambagt hadn’t noticed the interlude. “We, of course, improved on the art of wrecking.” He tapped the commissaris on the knee. “Listen here. Indians are the thing now, crystals and drumbeat journeys and power animals and bouncing around the tepee, and peyote, but what is it worth, right?” Carl smiled all-knowingly. “Throw in five dollars plus tax and all that Native American bullshit may buy two cappuccinos. Just imagine, the Calusas had been living here for thousands of years and they never thought of inventing a sailship. They had everything here, this is America for fuck’s sake, and Native Americans never thought of mixing up a bit of explosive.”

  “And no wheels,” Skipper Peter shouted angrily. “Shit, man, even in Rotterdam we had wheels.”

  Carl, comically, slapped his forehead. “It’s the fifteenth century and nobody thinks of wheels?”

  “Or oil tankers,” Peter wanted to slap his forehead too but missed. His tumbler crashed to the floor. The servant swept up the remains, brought him a fresh glass and held up the Wild Turkey bottle.

  Peter sipped. “Where was I?”

  “Oil in tankers, Skipper Peter.”

  “Good boy.” Ambagt Senior shook his head in admiration. “The oil business is best. Especially when I do it. Wheels weren’t bad, but oil?” He squinted at the commissaris. “Oil is big.”

  “How about drugs?” the commissaris asked. “I am sure the Calusas thought of drugs.”

  “What was that?” Peter asked vaguely.

  “Drugs,” the commissaris raised his voice “Mexican ports. The Yucatán peninsula with its cannabis plantations.” The commissaris, to show his good will, toasted his host with his glass of iced tea. “The coca jungles and opium farms of South America. Now there we make some money.”

  Skipper Peter looked morose. “Drugs never interested me.” He raised his glass. “Bootlegging, sure, but booze is okay now.”

  Carl accused Native Americans of discovering drugs. “What else was there? No sitcoms or nintendo. The tropical night lasts twelve hours, take out eight hours for sleep and you have four black hours to illuminate with narcotics. If you’re that dumb that you can’t even invent proper lighting …”

  “… oil lamps!” cheered Skipper Peter.

  The Admiraal Rodney, prodded by the young sailor’s finger, turned eastward, taking on the formidable Florida Strait Current. Grijpstra saw deep whirlpools changing into abysmal maelstroms, sharp cliffs circled by white sharks.

  “Shipwrecks,” Skipper Peter said after adjusting his dentures that kept slipping about.

  Key West became white, Carl went on. English Protestant, with some space for adjusted behavioral codes. The congregation looked up toward the preacher who, high on his pulpit, kept an eye on the horizon where sails moved close to the treacherous coast. “Wreck coming!” the preacher bellowed and headed his flock toward the beach. To help out, Key Westers tied lamps to the backs of donkeys and had the animals amble about on the beach. Slowly swaying lights, seen from the sea, indicated vessels leisurely moving about in a safe harbor. As soon as a ship hit a reef the islanders stormed their helpless prey. “Like ants attack a caterpillar,” Carl said contentedly. Good pickings were guaranteed. Eastbound ships were loaded with gold, silver and jewels, pillaged in South and Central America. Westbound ships carried luxuries to governors, military officers plantation owners and merchants. Captured passengers produced ample ransoms. Crews causing any trouble had their heads bashed in.

  “All that karma,” the commissaris said ruefully. “What a waste of opportunities, eh, Grijpstra?”

  Grijpstra groaned.

  “The wrecking keeps going on, doesn’t it?” the commissaris asked Carl. “Used to be ships, now it is jeeps. Mr. Stewart-Wynne’s jeep.”

  “What?” Carl asked.

  “Quadrant Bank, London,” the commissaris said. “You do business with Quadrant do you not?”

  “What?” Skipper Peter asked.

  Carl shrugged. “Bank. Banker. Dead banker. Nothing to do with us, Dad. We don’t even know the fellow.”

  “I do know Quadrant,” Peter said. “That’s a bank in London.”

  “Do you use Quadrant Bank for your financing?” the commissaris asked.

  Skipper Peter had trouble concentrating.

  “We used to maybe,” Carl said. “Quadrant works the Caribbean. Big bank, I believe.”

  “Interesting, don’t you think?” the commissaris asked Grijpstra. “No drug dealing but Quadrant doe
sn’t seem unknown to our clients.” He peered at Grijpstra’s face. “Oh dear, are you all right, Henk?”

  A young man wearing a cook’s hat announced that dinner was on the table. Grijpstra leaned across a railing. Skipper Peter had fallen asleep and was carried to his cabin by the boatswain and a servant.

  Carl Ambagt and the commissaris sat opposite each other at the narrow ends of a long dining table. The tablecloth was damask, the plates gold.

  The commissaris ate his halibut au gratin. The sound of powerful engines made him look up.

  “The American Air Force,” Carl said. “Coming out of Boca Chica airfield.” He pointed a forkful of noodles at the ceiling. “Always exercising.”

  The commissaris spooned egg and mustard sauce on his asparagus. “Exercises?”

  “Serious training,” Carl said. “Ever ready. The Cuban threat—six vintage MIGs that might possibly cross the straits. Well, it could happen. And those Mexican drugs of yours. They’re always watching.”

  “Of mine?” the commissaris asked.

  “Not mi-i-i-i-ne,” Carl said, using his Rotterdam sing-song accent.

  18

  A JEWISH GRANDMOTHER

  De Gier had exchanged the Cadillac for a bicycle. The Cadillac was too large for Key West’s alleys. De Gier kept thinking another car was following too closely but it was the Cadillac itself, its backside filling its own mirror. De Gier bicycled between blossoming magnolia trees at the edge of the cemetery that covers Key West’s center. Stone angels suffocated by weeds leaned toward him from cracked gravestones. Vultures circled above a freshly dug grave. De Gier’s bicycle tires crunched over broken oyster shells thrown out by a small fish restaurant. A man dressed in stained jeans and a torn shirt stretched a leg from the curb where he sat between trash cans. The man had a shapely body: narrow in the waist under a wide muscular chest. His long dirty hair hung around unshaven sunken cheeks. The deep set eyes seemed unnaturally large. In spite of his present condition the man looked military. A degenerate soldier?

  De Gier veered to avoid the inviting leg. He knew, because Sergeant Ramona had told him, that Key West is a magnet for homeless men. They are fed by various Christian charities, spend their days on beaches or in parking lots, sleep in junked cars or between mangroves around the golf links. Their daily needs for alcohol and narcotics are financed by scamming tourists. Earlier that day de Gier had tripped over a guitar box, pushed into his path. The mishap caused an uproar. The guitar inside might have been damaged by de Gier kicking the box! The valuable instrument’s owner, a big-bellied tramp dressed in a torn raincoat, estimated that the guitar could be more or less restored for fifty dollars.

  De Gier shook his head. “You’re kidding, buddy.”

  “Ah?” shouted complainant. “So it’s going to be like that is it?” Two other bums appeared. Three men shook hairy fists above their beerguts. “Fuckface Tourist, hand over your wallet.”

  De Gier remembered good advice given by an instructor at the Amsterdam Police School. De Gier spoke kindly, facing the complainant squarely. “Why are you so nervous, Friend?”

  Complainant, suddenly unnerved, giggled shyly. “Me? Nervous? How do you mean? Nervous?”

  “He has a mental imbalance,” the second tramp said when de Gier appeared genuinely curious. “Could be hormones.” The third tramp lifted his scarecrow hat. “I used to work in a pharmacy, sir. It’s the chemicals that get us. Because of artificial euphorics imbibed by the likes of us the body’s natural ability to calm, even cheer itself, decreases.” He replaced his hat. He took it off again. “A deficiency which makes us nervous.”

  “It’s the devil’s work,” the first tramp wailed. “Now we’ve got to take chemicals to feel normal.”

  Minutes later, walking from Car Rental to Bicycle Rental, de Gier was waylaid again. This time the bum said that he, that very morning, not less than an hour ago, had been turned around, born again so to speak. The bum, fighting back his tears, stuttering with emotion, said that just now he had met with—well, he didn’t know how to describe the entity—a “Higher Power” maybe? Right there, behind that little church, in the shadow of the enormous fig tree, Key West’s biggest banyan tree, that’s where it happened. Banyans are holy. During the conversation with, well, okay, with God, a gleaming figure made from, well, luminous compressed air?—the bum claimed that describing the Supreme Creator of All isn’t easy—it had become clear to this sinner that a new chance was being offered him. What he had to do was return to New York City where, on West Fifty-Eighth Street, he had left his family without sustenance or money. A bus ticket home would cost one hundred dollars. The bum, doing his utmost not to cry, extended a clawlike hand. God had said so. God said He would send a messenger, someone who would pay for the bus ticket for He, well, okay, God, wasn’t carrying a wallet.

  De Gier wished the born again bum a good journey.

  “No dough?”

  “No dough.”

  “Asshole,” the bum shouted.

  “Why are you so nervous?” de Gier asked kindly, looking his assailant in the eyes. The bum started crying.

  And now another homeless person was bothering de Gier. De Gier kept on riding as the tramp behind him shouted that almost hurting his leg was as good as hurting his leg and that he would now sue the negligent cyclist. “What’s your name, asshole?”

  De Gier wondered why bums kept calling him “asshole”. In Dutch the word is not used except in its proper context. Dutch drunks would call him “scrotum.” Why the anal angle? He got off his bike, put it against a tree and walked back slowly. The bum got up and said he hadn’t meant it that way. De Gier kept coming. The bum’s mood reverted a little. He admitted to not having a good day but that didn’t mean that he was prepared to have faggot tourists beat on his body. He was a military man, a specialist, “some kind of hero.” He postured: feet facing outward, knees bent, arms loose, fingers spread. He used an affected bass voice. “Come and get it.”

  “A beer?” de Gier asked, sitting down on the curb.

  “Now we are talking,” said the drunk. “Fish & Chips over there has some cold ones but you do the fetching. They won’t let me in no more.”

  De Gier fetched two cold beers for his guest and an iced tea for himself. The beer cans were inserted into brown paper bags. Bare beer cans are not tolerated, the shopgirl said, not even in Key West, “capital of the Conch Republic.” Just kidding of course, she said. There never was a Conch Republic but Key Westers like to feel separate. She laughed. How could they be? “Not with all them fool bridges.”

  “We’re not going to play sneaky, are we?” the drunk asked, snatching the beer in bags from de Gier’s hands.

  De Gier asked what was meant.

  “No performance of unnatural deeds,” the bum said. He raised a beer bag. “No blowing of tourists in return for fluid ounces. Okay?”

  “Okay.” De Gier smiled all sneakiness aside. “You were with the military?”

  The bum begged time out for ritual. There had to be the snappy opening of the can, the adoring bending back of the neck, the wide opening of eyes to see the source of the divine libation, the actual pouring that connects higher and lower regions, the satisfied swallow, the post-orgiastic “hehhhhhhh,” the withdrawal of lips to express inner centering accentuated by the sharp intake of air. “Yes,” the bum saluted. “I was a specialist I’ll have you know.”

  “Shock troops,” de Gier said.

  “Temporary-helicopter-base-builders-protector,” the drunk titled his former position, that had involved parachuting into the jungle, armed with knife and carbine, in a camouflage uniform, under a wide-brimmed floppy hat, face blackened, backpack stuffed with quick-energy foods and liquids. It meant making immediate radio contact with two colleagues who had jumped close by. Meeting these colleagues. Cooperating in finding a good location for a future landing site for helicopters. Radioing coordinates to Command. Waiting for giant cargo helicopters that, ten minutes in and out, discharged personnel an
d provisions. Protecting the site while it is being prepared. Small fighting choppers would fly out of some faraway base to attack enemy locations and use the site to recharge their weapons and take on fuel. They’d attack the now nearby enemy again, several times maybe, at short intervals, until their mission was completed. The entire action might only take a few hours. The big helicopters would return and pick up the site’s ground staff. By now the enemy might know where you were but by the time they came in there would be nothing but burnt earth and skeleton trees. And you and your two mates, having blown up the leftover stores of food, fuel and ammo by remote control, would be sneaking through the jungle, hiding there for a few days, running until a safe zone was reached where a chopper could land to pick you up.

  “Nice work,” de Gier said. “You don’t do that anymore?”

  The bum held up his second beer can. There had been problems. A bar fight followed by a First Warning. Discussing classified subjects in the presence of hookers was followed by a Second Warning. Drunk in barracks. Three strikes and you’re out. Discharge with dishonor, oh dear oh dear oh dear. “Up yours,” the bum snarled.

  “Up yours,” de Gier said kindly.

  “With my kind of luck,” the bum said sadly, “things usually turn out bad.” He accepted being Down and Out for the time being, but there were all kinds of official bodies willing to help down-and-outers. A spiritual reevaluation was just around the corner. It would be necessary to open up for that. Right now he happened to be closed.

  “I might require your services,” de Gier said.

  “Nothing too nasty?”

  “Definitely nasty,” de Gier said. “Definitely complete. A deadly accident. Technical preparations.”

  The bum said that this was the Age of Specialization. He himself had only been trained to spot, protect and destroy temporary helicopter bases. After that came the safety of the jungle. There was no jungle in Key West, however. If the police blocked route A1A, the only road out, the law enforcement forces would be sure to get him. Everybody knows what comes next. The pulling out of toenails and electrocuting of genitals in a bamboo cage while being stabbed by infected spears handled by fat women.