Nevertheless, my new status gave me a few firm benefits. For each month spent at sea, the company would grant me two weeks’ leave, during which I would be free to spend as much time with my wife as I wished. The lowest pay grade was twice as high as that of a stevedore at the docks. Mathilde and I used the extra money to buy a house not far from where we had been living. Since we had already set up home in this new city, and in a neighborhood we liked, we wished to minimize any more disruption to our lives. Before I embarked, we held a party to celebrate my becoming a sailor. All my neighbors came to congratulate me on this position, which so many men coveted without daring to go for it. No doubt this indecisiveness owed much to their wives’ fierce will to keep their husbands close by.
It was the day of my departure, my giant leap into this masculine world tossed on the ocean waves. Mathilde and I were both edgy as we got up that March morning, gnawed at by the fear of not seeing each other for a month. I would never have forgiven myself if something happened to Mathilde while I was away. For several long minutes I felt like giving up on the idea and just snuggling closer to my wife, making love to her, then falling asleep by her side, cozy and warm beneath the eiderdown, where we’d be safe like two kids in their playhouse at the bottom of the garden. After all, Mathilde was the love of my life, the girl who had made my heart beat faster from the first moment our eyes met. I sat on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands. What should I do?
I imagined the ship leaving port. A long column of smoke rises into a sky full of seagulls screaming my name: Paul! Paul! Paul! I stand on the quayside, my eyes full of tears. The captain leans on the ship’s guardrail, laughing through the mist at my indecisiveness. My father appears beside him, takes his arm, and leads him in a ritualistic dance to the accompaniment of the screaming gulls: Little girl! Little girl! Little girl! The pair are soon joined by a cohort of exuberantly tattooed sailors, and they all dance, arms linked, in a sort of diabolical cancan. I crumple to the ground, weary of being a little girl, weary of not being able to accept my choices, weary of hesitating. The ship disappears into the mist, leaving behind nothing but silence.
I realized how difficult it is to attain one’s childhood dreams, and how hard it is to remain focused on one’s goal. Life constantly offers us newer, easier, less restrictive paths. We turn down them with disconcerting ease, like a herd of cows being led to the slaughterhouse. But I wanted to see things through, to satisfy that little boy on the quayside with his sailor’s hat, to wipe the mocking smile off my father’s face and make the two women in my life, Mathilde and Mama, proud.
I stood up from the bed, possessed by an invisible force, a mixture of anxiety and exaltation. Mathilde got up too. She looked nervous. I faced her and told her I loved her and that she had always been the only woman for me and always would be. But the little boy inside me couldn’t wait any longer; he demanded his slice of the pie. He wanted to live, love, escape, feel, travel, explore, imagine, learn, marvel, play, smell, taste, touch, hear, see, open his arms to destiny, and embrace life fully. He had to leave. Mathilde watched me dress, eyes wide, as if a ghost had appeared to haunt her. I took her in my arms to reassure her. My excitement at starting this new adventure made me feel almost crazy. I was filled with the kind of true happiness that makes your heart beat faster and gives you the strength to move mountains.
Mathilde accompanied me to the ship, subdued. I promised to write her letters and mail them as soon as the ship reached port. She smiled shyly, wiping away a tear with the cuff of her sleeve. My beloved. My Mathilde. My other half.
At the port, a group of men and women had gathered close to the gangway leading up to the massive ship. Its engines began to throb in the harbor. At its stern, huge bubbles formed in the water, emerging from the depths like a geyser spurting from the belly of the earth. The men on the quayside, used to this ritual, comforted the weeping women, who were tired of being abandoned. Here in this sizable port, couples formed and split according to the rhythms of shipping and the huge profits reaped by owners who, ensconced in their comfortable apartments, never had to deal with such frustrations. Inequality is emotional as well as material. Some grab all the joy and happiness while others, through an accident of birth, must make do with sadness and frustration.
I wrapped my arms tenderly around my wife and kissed her forehead and cheeks. I told her again how much I loved her. Nothing and no one could change that. Neither the ocean nor the distance would ever remove the faith I had in our union. I kissed her lips, thinking of my marriage proposal by that little Brittany creek. My sweet thoughts were rudely interrupted by the sound of the captain’s whistle. I let go of weeping Mathilde, picked up my pack, and headed up the gangway. A river of tears poured onto the quayside. The men climbed aboard while their women waved tear-soaked handkerchiefs above their heads. This was the great moment of departure, the one I had witnessed twenty years before in wonderment without realizing that sailors’ veins are filled with rivers of sadness. I shouted passionate “I love yous” to Mathilde in farewell. She waved her arms wildly as if she had never known shyness, shattering the decorum taught by her parents, shucking off the demanding habits and customs that constrained her, that constrain us all. For a moment she became the little girl she had ceased to be when misfortune had struck her family and carried off her mother forever. She was soon a little black dot on the horizon, dwindling until I could see her no more.
The countdown had begun. A month without my wife. The ship’s siren blared loudly across the deck. The captain had the decency to wait until we had said farewell to our weeping women before addressing us, he who cheated on his wife without a second thought. But he was in charge. The old, experienced sea dog had the mission of sailing between two cities that lay fifteen hundred miles apart. The time for reflection was past. We had to prepare the ship for when the ocean waves started slamming against the hull, trying their utmost to capsize us. He strode about yelling orders left and right, reminding sailors of their tasks.
“Dhenu and Bonnarme, galley!”
“Yes, Captain!”
“Bouquet, engine room!”
“Yes, Captain!”
“Ducos, bridge!”
“Yes, Captain!”
Then he turned to me, thought for a few moments, and ordered me to follow him. We entered a narrow passageway and proceeded through a labyrinth of mazes, hatchways, and corridors. I soon felt like I’d been plunged into a story from Greek mythology. Like Theseus pursuing the Minotaur, I followed the master of the house through the tight spaces of the steel hulk. The captain halted in front of a door, opened it, and signaled that I should leave my pack there. My cabin: two bunk beds on either side, along with four tiny lockers. I threw my pack down, and the captain closed the door and handed me a key.
We returned to the labyrinth. I felt swallowed by the passageways, which were all painted the same dark green. The captain stopped before another door, opened it, and took out a mop and bucket. He told me to go swab the deck. The vague memory of the Torcy barracks returned to haunt me: those endless hours spent scrubbing the floors, cleaning the disgusting toilets, the windows, the cutlery, and the dishes. “We all start like this,” the captain said, appreciating my lack of interest in household chores. He gave an ironic smile and disappeared down the maze of corridors without waiting for me.
I took my charwoman’s tools and headed for the deck, trying to backtrack the way we’d come. I took the wrong passageway several times, returning to my starting point, before the lights suddenly went out and I had to fumble my way along, unable to find the light switch. I was completely lost. Several sailors rushed past, preoccupied with their work, in that state of constant alertness you have to adopt at sea in order to survive. I tried to ask one of them the way. They laughed and ignored me. After several more fruitless attempts, I finally managed to reach daylight, which I found dazzling after wandering around in the dimness below deck. When the other sailors saw me, they applauded in unison. The captain stepped
forward and warmly shook my hand. He explained that all this was an initiation ritual, a way of tightening the bonds between crewmembers. “You have to lose yourself to find your way. That’s true both aboard ship and in life,” he said, launching into a series of scandalous anecdotes about his adventures—both maritime and erotic—while roaring with laughter, proud of doling out his philosophy to the sailors under his command. He wasn’t wrong. Life is a huge ocean liner carrying us all. We open and close doors according to our moods. Some people reach rock bottom before they see the light. Others, weary of contemplating it, throw themselves over the guardrail, dissatisfied at not being able to discover more, preferring to explore the depths of the sea at the risk of drowning themselves. Still others wander their whole lives in the bowels of the vessel, scurrying to find the exit, thrown around in the passageways by the buffeting of the swell. The path to truth is not a straight line.
A week passed quickly. I tirelessly scrubbed the bridge, rubbing hard to remove the salt deposited by squalls. It was not an easy job, as I quickly realized. But I held fast to my dream like a lioness holds fast to her cubs. At night, while most of the ship’s company slept, and when the sea was behaving itself enough to let me go outside, I would stretch out on the deck and stare up at the sky with its infinite blanket of stars. I was happy lying there like that, as I had been in the garden as a child. The moon shone in the sky, illuminating the ocean with its soft light, changing over the days as its position shifted, from smiling crescent to tranquil quarter to full and melancholic, but always with the same intensity of gaze, the same ardor, the same perpetual exuberance. Watching this celestial extravagance, I secretly prayed that nothing would wither: my love for Mathilde, for Mama, for my whole family. I prayed for life to be simply an ocean of tenderness, a calm lake on which my craft would cruise freely. When I reached my peak of relaxation, there on the ship’s deck that was my planetarium, it appeared in all its splendor. I saw it. Yes, I saw it. The smile of the moon . . .
QUARTER MOON
21
A week later, we reached our first destination, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. It appeared on the featureless horizon as if by magic, a dark speck that became a looming mass as we approached, a jutting promontory surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean. The sky began to fill with seagulls screeching in their incomprehensible tongue, many of them gliding to perch on the ship. I was astonished at the contrast between the deep-blue ocean, the dark rock, and the azure sky. And there was the sun shining high above, bathing the whole landscape in its golden light. The panorama seemed unreal, like something straight from the imagination of a painter whose brushstrokes had no limits.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” the captain murmured in my ear as I stood there on the ship’s bridge.
“Yes, Captain,” I replied, gazing at the horizon.
“I’ve been sailing these waters for thirty years and I still get dazzled by the beauty of the Canary Islands,” he added.
Motionless, we stood there for a while, hypnotized by this sublime, timeless scenery. There are few things, few moments, few places that move a man to this extent. We were in perfect harmony with nature, the captain and me, our souls filled with a serenity that cannot be altered by any terrestrial cares or concerns. All was beauty and hope.
Yet the crossing had not been entirely serene. We had been hit by a gale off the Portuguese coast that had confined me to my bed for an entire day, puking into a bucket, struck with a seasickness I hoped never to experience again. The feeling of pitching with the swell soon became unbearable. Several times I felt like hurling myself out of my cabin’s porthole just to make it stop, to regain a little stability in that constantly shifting world of the open sea. Seasickness is an ordeal in which one curses the natural elements gathered to remind us that, despite our arrogance, we are simply guests at Mother Nature’s feast.
I shared my cabin with three other sailors—two Frenchmen and one Spaniard—and the cramped space was devoid of any comfort. “You don’t go to sea for privacy,” sniggered one of the Frenchmen, with whom I had attempted to strike up a conversation without any success. The other Frenchman didn’t talk much either. The Spaniard, who answered to the name of Martín—pronounced marteen—was much more talkative. In comparison to him, the French sailors appeared sad and uninteresting. Martín spoke perfect French and expressed himself with that marked accent Spaniards have, in which they pronounce all the letters of their language. He talked very, very loudly, waving his arms around to illustrate his points and cursing profusely, which wasn’t to everyone’s taste. He would say “Ay amm Marteen ffrom Andaloussiaa” to remind us how proud he was of his country of birth. Sometimes, when he had drunk too much, he began dancing on the table, clicking his fingers above his head and striking the wooden top sharply with his heels. Everybody laughed and applauded. Martín was one of our only sources of entertainment, truth be told. We were bored stiff whenever he wasn’t around.
One evening, when it was just the two of us on deck, Martín told me his story. He had an extraordinary way of recounting his existence, alternating tragic tales, which had me oozing compassion from every pore, with comic interludes that had me in stitches. He lampooned some of the more awful episodes of the Spanish Civil War, doing a wonderful imitation of General Franco and his hatred of the Communists—the scapegoats of the regime. Martín talked and talked, never tiring, while I listened, like a little boy on his grandfather’s knee. In his words I detected a constant faith in human nature and an unconditional love for others, coupled with an intense lust for life. When he had finished his story, I told him mine. He didn’t interrupt once, a sign of great empathy, in contrast to more egocentric folk who are always butting in—and with whom I’ve always had great difficulty in forging links. I told him the story of the German soldier, his tragic death at the hands of my fellow citizens, my expedition to Frankfurt only to discover that his daughter had gone to the Canary Islands, how I’d become a sailor. His eyes suddenly lit up when he realized the connection between my story and our current destination. It touched something in his romantic nature, and he offered to help track down Catherine Schäfer. We would get a few days’ shore leave when we moored in Las Palmas before making the return trip, giving us plenty of time to pursue our investigation.
And that is what we did as soon as we stepped off the boat the following morning, as dawn was breaking.
“Where shall we start?” I asked.
“At the ayuntamiento,” answered Martín as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
I was a little embarrassed. “The what?”
“The ayuntamiento, the town hall. It’s this way.”
We walked through the port, scattering seagulls, past stevedores hard at work unloading the ships, singing loudly to keep up their morale, a practice that must be the same the world over. Beyond the port we could see the town, each house painted a different color. One was mauve, another yellow, another red, another blue, as if a building’s color denoted the inhabitants’ social status. Odd custom, I thought, although I wasn’t sure if wealth really had anything to do with it. Two huge mountains overlooked the town, haughtily exhibiting nature’s supremacy over man.
“Those mountains you see in the distance, that’s the La Isleta district,” said Martín, seeing my amazement. “Las Palmas has several districts. Vegueta, Mesa y López, Las Canteras, and Guanarteme are the best known. Each district has its own history and customs. Vegueta, for example, is where Christopher Columbus built his house when he stopped in the Canaries on the way to the Americas. Las Canteras is the beach district.”
“And La Isleta?” I asked.
“That’s a dangerous district. Not somewhere you should hang around.”
Martín became silent and pensive all of a sudden. We continued walking. He was hiding something from me, but I didn’t try to find out more, out of respect for our friendship. We entered the town proper. It was buzzing with life. We passed a market smelling of fresh fish, then stopped in f
ront of an old European-style building.
“We’re here,” declared Martín, suddenly merry again.
The man juggled emotional states like an entertainer with their clubs. He switched from a smile to a grimace in a fraction of a second, from chagrin to enthusiasm, from laughter to tears, all with a disconcerting ease that left me speechless. Martín was an enigma I was patiently trying to pierce. A mixture of uncontainable joie de vivre and sudden, overwhelming melancholy, the man seemed deeply marked by his chaotic life, wounded to the core of his being.
We entered the building and approached the reception desk, where an old lady sat wearing a look of utter boredom. A wide smile lit up her face when she saw us. How pleasant, I thought. Martín greeted her warmly, then started a conversation in which I understood only a few words. But I enjoyed listening to them talk, in spite of my incomprehension. Clearly intrigued by our tale, the old lady disappeared behind the reception desk and returned a few minutes later accompanied by a man who invited us to take a seat in his office. The man listened attentively as Martín explained the situation, shooting me the occasional compassionate glance as if he understood the deeply humane value of my quest. When Martín had finished speaking, the man, visibly moved, stroked his chin for a few seconds and asked us to wait while he checked the register of births, marriages, and deaths, as well as the register of foreign nationals who had moved to the island. The excitement of finally closing in on my goal rose in me like a flooded river bursting its banks. I saw a glimmer of hope in my friend’s eyes too. The wait was interminable. I paced up and down. The man reappeared, looking slightly embarrassed. I immediately understood that he hadn’t found anything. He apologized and wished us good luck. We left the building glumly.
Seasons of the Moon Page 11
