Their ship was a wooden heart pulsing through rising waters, the waves lapping at the stern like some lost tribe of children seeking a mother’s refuge. In the wind that blew beneath the thunderstorm the echoes of their heaving carried low and long, and those who waited on the shore heard no sound but the laughter of these lunatics lowering their ropes for the tying. Whole streams of foam fell over the sides, further soaking the crew in their colorful array of clothing. Men wept with hysterical hilarity, calloused hands clutching ropes and knots as they watched the swinging masts and the city beyond the shore. Eagerly, the crew continued towards the shore. Their square top sail had been stripped to shreds off Puerto Princesa, and five days later they lost four men in a storm southwest of Manila.
In Hong Kong Captain Landstrum had taken ill, his breaths clapping against his throat like an old animal growl. Twenty miles out of the port at Guongzhou they gave his body back to the Sea, his pale stare disappearing into the blackness.
They would all be filthy rich, those who were still alive.
The ship scraped against the dock and the men aboard cheered. Shouts in strange accents shook hands with the sharp cracking of the squall overhead as the crew began this ancient procession. Long had they all been lingering at sea like birds lost from their flock. Each man was his own world entire. Their first mate was a one-eyed opium addict called ‘Half’ who hailed from some horrible shithole hidden somewhere along the coast of Chile. With his cold eye open he kept a close watch on his crew – it was his crew now that the Captain had been buried – and he intended to indulge himself in an old Irish whore at a cleaver’s room called The Bassoon.
He looked out past the men busy on the deck and stared at the long silhouettes of spires that stood proud through the drifting smoke. Singapore loomed. Half sniffed and spat and shouted out his orders and studied his men.
There was the Japanese harpooner who had been picked up in Java; the Indonesian Priest named Parapret who had tattooed his own torso with colors unfurling like clouds, swirling in spirals; the wheel-man from Wales whom no one could understand. There was the Buddhist from Burma – named Shovendra – who rarely spoke unless speaking a prayer over a passenger, or a corpse. The oarsman from Ireland with his thumbs cut off at the knuckle; the mute boy from Bangladesh; the angry American whom the crew called ‘Temptress’ on account of his accidental run-in with a hermaphrodite in Hong Kong.
The men, as they unloaded, started singing. Half grinned in low gloom, knowing the time of day by the way the light hit the water. The crew unloaded their catch, feet busy down the ship’s ramps, their voices like an old rug soaked in bourbon and set afire as the storm thundered overhead. Rain fell like vats of urine being poured over the side of God’s rowboat; cracks of lightning scoured the open waters like tribesman’s spears. Half went to starboard side and looked down at the land. Down on the ramps, the Algerian tradesman and a harpooner from Denmark named Normanander negotiated numbers with a dockside bookmaker. The Algerian – whose eyes were always seeming to be starting with an evil intent – smiled and tilted his head back slow, a long understanding nod following the smile. Normanander looked back at Half and made a circle with his thumb and forefinger, and Half nodded. They would be paid in full, then. Half watched the Algerian wave a hand over the fresh stubble of his shaved head, his purple tweed jacket starting to tatter at the shoulders and wrists. The Algerian followed the bookmaker across the thin strip of cobblestone the lined the dock’s edge, lighting his pipe under the steep fabric-overhang of a seamarket shop.
"Peppers,” the Temptress called up to Half, the first mate, now in charge. “We need rice, and lemon,” he replied.
He snapped at the Japanese harpooner, his hands dancing in the air as he made the sign to go below deck to fetch the dead Captain’s coin purse. The harpooner rushed back up to the top-deck, most of the other men starting to descend down the ramps and into the outskirts of the far-east city, where they would haunt it’s halls and alleyway and barside bathhouses like old seafaring spirits just released from the bottom of an abysmal well.
“We make-a-ha-leest,” the Japanese harpooner said to Half. His English was mumbled and spoken rapidly. “Ev-er-y-item, on leest.”
He and the American called Temptress were in charge of resupplying the kitchen stock for the next leg out. The cook was an insufferable Indonesian hunter who had made a living on dry land by selling hyena’s in Africa’s great midlands. He too, could barely speak English, the common language amongst these men.
“Listen,” said Half, his Chilean accent strong and noticable. “Irewan is crazy bastard. Do no let him convince you … to spend monies on women. No these monies. You want women? You use you monies. You no use these monies. Si?”
“We’ll meet you all up at the Bassoon, after,” said Temptress the American. A tattoo above his right eye read ‘RPE, NY’. His left ear had been clipped off in some knife fight near the Kelladona pass, in the mountains of upstate New York.
"We won’t let that crazy bastard cook tell us what to buy.”
Half and the Japanese Harpooner went back below deck to fetch the Irewan the cook. The American leaned against the rail, looking out.
All the others had dissolved into the streets, save for the Burmese Buddhist, who sat meditating amidst the abandoned ropes and equipment that had been left scattered on the deck. The familiar smells of iron and ore and whale meat were mingling with the foreignness of Singapore’s dockside kitchens and peddle merchants, soiled sheets and open sewers.
The Buddhist’s eyes were closed, and he appeared to be smiling slightly, sitting in the full lotus position, like a praying mantis.
The American had actually seen a praying mantis once, in Panama, before his wife had been killed. “American,” said the Buddhist, his eyes still closed. His English was near perfect, his body covered by oversized trousers rolled up to the knee.
“You staying with the ship?”
"I will stay with the ship, Sir,” said the Buddhist, nodding, his eyes still closed. “I have much to do inside of myself.”
The American spat.
"That’s fair enough,” he said. “I got much to do inside of some particularly loose and beautiful women, so we on the same page in that respect, ain’t we.”
"Yes,” said the Buddhist, his eyes still closed.
“I think you’re one crazy bastard, too,” said the American. “Hell I think you might be the craziest bastard of em all.”
Finally the Buddhist opened his eyes. He smiled genuinely.
“The fool believes what he thinks, and not what he sees. The wise man believes what he sees, and not what he thinks.”
The American sniffed, and started to laugh.
And our boot heels going slow along the soaking cobblestone
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