Planus (11 page)

'Hey! Drink this, man, it's good stuff. It comes from my hometown !'

It was Papadakis, his torso emerging from the hatchway, holding out an enamel jug which must have held about two litres.

I drank the whole measure at one gulp.

'It's good,' I said. 'Are we getting under way, Captain?'

'Are you in a hurry, then?'

'No, I'm not in a hurry and I've got nowhere to go. But I didn't join the ship to gaze at Vesuvius. I've seen enough of it! Besides, I think we should take advantage of this breeze and sail before nightfall.'

The sun was still setting. The ripples chased one another inshore, making the sea look like watered silk. It was choppy.

Papadakis shaded his eyes with his hand, inspected the sky and the sea, sniffed the rising wind.

'You may be right,' he said, 'but don't you start meddling in other people's affairs. Are you a sailor?'

'Yes . .. no . . . that is to say .. .'

   'You've been sailing before?'

'Yes.'

'Where?'

'Switzerland. On Lake Neuchatel.'

'Can you steer?'

'Of course. I used to have a little lugger that went like an arrow and sailed very close to the wind. Grandfather gave it to me for my tenth birthday.'

'Good. You can take the watch tomorrow morning with the boy.'

'I would prefer the night watch.'

'Why?'

'Because I don't sleep at night.'

'Oh well, we'll see,' said Papadakis. 'Do you want another drink?'

'Yes, please, skipper.'

The Greek descended into his hole again, set the enamel jug in its place, foraged once more in his locker, climbed back up, fastened down the hatch, pulled the cover over it, locked it, padlocked it, stepped forward on the deck and shouted: 'Come on, lads, we're sailing!'

'Are we going to France?' I asked.

'Why?' Papadakis asked, looking me straight in the eye.

'Whoever heard of taking Samos wine to Italy?'

'Do you know people in Marseille?'

'No.'

'Well, then, mind your own business. I've told you that before.'

'Right, skipper. But there'd be no point smuggling along these coasts, there's too much wine in the country already.'

'Aha! So that's what you think, is it?'

And Papadakis burst out laughing, his eyes full of menace.

He really looked like a pirate, with those beetle brows and ferocious moustaches.

I, too, burst out laughing. That Samos wine was capital. I was feeling better.

I had tucked my Isfahan cane through my belt like a sword and was hauling with both hands on a halyard hanging from the mast. God, how heavy the mainsail was! With four of us we could only; just hoist it, inch by inch. The ship's boy sprang up, dangling wit his full weight above us; the Bulgar was snorting like a rhinoceros swearing, sweating and smelling foul; Papadakis, who was un commonly strong, was pulling calmly, hand over hand, his pair tough and hardened, his biceps bulging, his knees flexing, exercising a continuous pressure, as regular as a machine, while I for my p£ pulled with all my might, bracing myself by standing on the Bulgar' feet, treading on his corns and making him yell.

'Pay out the slack, you lousy devil!' I said to him.

But when I saw the mainsail unfurl itself in all its splendour high above our heads, and the sprit whose peak reached almost as high as the mast, I understood why we had had such a hard job with it: the fore-and-aft sail was about sixty yards square and the gaff was twelve yards in length. The boy was already running along it and climbing into the ratlines to rig the square topsail, whose canvas slid down from above like a theatre curtain. Paying out the hawser1 which bound us to the buoy, raising the anchor, steadying the jib and the staysail were child's play, and soon our lovely ship, keeling over, began to come to life and beat up to windward, rising into the wind as we sailed out of the gulf. The land receded behind us, but, we still had one important chore, hauling the dinghy aboard, which gave rise to an incident.

Papadakis was at the helm. The Bulgar was sitting down, drinking again with the aid of a straw he had plunged into the cask he held between his knees. The boy and I had not the strength to haul the; dinghy up on the block and tackle, so I called to the Bulgar to give' us a hand. But the miserable sod did not bulge, pretending to be deaf, sitting there smirking and cynical, sucking at his straw, aspirating his wine, sipping it with comical grimaces, and not giving bugger for us. Then Papadakis came up behind him, holding a knotted cord in his hand, and lashed him across the face with it. I went to the drunkard's aid.

'Watch out, Papadakis!' I shouted, brandishing my Isfahan cane and making it whistle and twirl round the skipper's head, 'you've no right to strike this man! There's a blade at the end of my sticky Look out!'

I lunged and poked him in the navel.

My feint worked well. The Levantines are imaginative, and Papadakis fell backwards from sheer emotion, clutching his paunch?

with both hands and imagining his belly was slit open. Instinctively I crouched down, ducking my head and, at the same moment, a kitchen knife whizzed between the two of us and embedded itself, quivering, in the deck. It was the boy, who thought his uncle had been murdered. I raised my head. The boy was standing under the block and tackle trembling, his eyes wild. He had another knife in his hand, as long as the first one, and would have disembowelled me if I had taken one step forward. He was in a towering passion.

round, and secured above the loading-hatch, beside the 'drinking tank', a cylindrical wooden container holding some fifty litres drinking water, and behind the hand-winch.

'Let's have a drink, boys,' said Papadakis, undoing the padlock and going down to his locker. He came up again with a brimming pitcher.

'I had a narrow escape,' he said.

He took a long swig and passed me the jug; I drank slowly,  steadily, passed the jug to the boy to annoy the Bulgar, and rapped him on the knuckles of his outstretched hand with my cane : 'You've drunk enough, you threefold fiend, there's your cask over there. . . And I jerked my thumb over my shoulder towards the 'drinking tank' daubed with red, yellow and green bands.  >

'I'll kill you . . .' muttered the Bulgar, getting up and going to stretch out in his pigsty, beside his beloved hogshead, which he cradled in his arms and cuddled tenderly before falling asleep, like a wet-nurse suckling a babe. He was revolting.

The sun had taken its mighty plunge. The sea was green an rosy pink. The canopy of the sky was dark, almost blue-black, to th east, and fringed with crystalline brilliance to the west. Darkness rose off the misty land. We were leaving the gulf, turning round Gap Miseno. Papadakis, who was at the helm, gave the wheel a sharp turn : we were heading due north. A fresh wind was blowing. The ship's boy hoisted a flying-jib at bow and stern, and I the mizzen topsail. This Samos wine was terrific. Things were going well. I felt in good shape. We were sailing without lights, like heroes, under full spread of canvas. The first stars were glittering, and the stempos chattered and hummed as it cleaved the water.

The sea broke into white foam.

I felt free.

Ready for adventure. . . .

'Kallimera,
Mademoiselle!'

We had become great pals, the ship's boy and I, and every morning when I came off watch I chatted to him while he prepared Turkish coffee, setting half a dozen little copper pans with long handles on the embers of the fire, polished the tray and wiped th dainty porcelain cup which he would carry down to his uncle cabin. When we had drunk our coffee he grabbed the mop and I th bucket and we swabbed the decks, which had never known sue* a gala day before, and we roared with laughter when, reaching the Bulgar's pigsty, I tipped the bucket of water over his head shouting: 'Hey, shake a leg there! Wakey, wakey, you swine

The coffee's on the fire, go and take the watch, it's time. . . .'

After the midday dish of garbanzas, Papadakis generally went below for a siesta, and the boy would shortly slip off to join him for an hour or two, tiptoeing away on his bare feet as if he were ashamed. It was the hottest hour of the day. The Bulgar drank3 tippled, dozed, became delirious, drank some more. I stretched out in the dinghy, sleeping with one eye open, as I did not trust the whims of that drunkard, and the ship, rolling gently from side to side, sailed on by the grace of God, the sails lifeless, the fore-and-aft sail hanging limp, pleated and wrinkled like a breast sucked dry of milk. At the slightest rustle I opened my eyes. But it was not the wind whispering. It was not yet time for that. It was the bare feet, the bare feet of the boy returning, scuttling along faster than ai mouse and vanishing like a shadow as he went to hide in the sail- locker or curl up in a roll of winch-rope, on the fo'c's'le or against the bowsprit, making as little noise as possible, keeping quiet, shamefaced. But I had spied his flight and, after a few seconds, came to join him as if nothing had happened, and to amuse and distract him and restore his self-respect, so that he could forget his unfortunate relationship with his uncle and understand that there is no shame that endures, no matter how low one may have fallen, nor any misfortune from which it is impossible to recover and become a man, a free man again, I played the clown, did conjuring tricks and juggled with my Isfahan cane and some kitchen utensils. To make the youngster laugh, I performed acrobatic feats, turned cartwheels and did the splits, walked on my hands and somersaulted on the deck, as a big brother might do to instruct his younger, brother, teach him, demonstrate by example, so that he sees how you can always regain your balance after a slip, or when you take ai false step and risk coming a cropper and breaking your spinal column after a simple back somersault, and also how you can roll; yourself into a ball so as not to hurt yourself when you fall from a height. And I told him tales about my own and other lives.  i

'More,' he kept saying, 'tell me more....'

So I told him about Pedro Alvarez Cabral, the admiral who discovered Brazil in the year 1500 : his longboats, heavily laden with harquebuses, were making for the shore when they perceived a multitude of savages, armed with bows and arrows, assagai and; clubs, yelling, prancing and shouting their war-cry. At once, the cowards put the boats about and began pulling on the oars with all their might to get back under the lee of the Portuguese fleet, and, when he saw what was happening, Cabral ordered the most violent and rebellious man in the squadron, an inveterate criminal but famous as an acrobat and contortionist in Lisbon, to be taken out of irons,. then ordered this outlaw to go and talk to the cannibals, promising him a free pardon if he succeeded in his mission. And this strange ambassador stripped himself naked, plunged head-first into the water and swam unhesitatingly to the shore. Watching through his telescope, the admiral saw him land, turn a cartwheel, walk on his hands, do a double and a triple somersault, to the great amazement of the savages, who crowded round him, following his every move, and finally prostrated themselves in adoration before him, while the acrobat, his face deadpan, gave the arranged signal and Cabral was able to disembark and set up the King of Portugal's standard on this immense virgin territory and raise a
perdao
bearing the arms of his far-off little country as a sign of taking possession (like the Lusitanian discoverers, who set up so many of those carved stones, from the White Sea to the seas of China and from the rio Negro of the Amazon to the rio Verde in Mozambique), and Father Anchieta erected a cross, all this without bloodshed and by making friends with the chief and the elders of the village.

God, what on earth shall I look like when I emerge at last from my solitude in Aix-en-Provence (I shall be seventy then, a good age to make the trip to Benares, under the auspices of Thomas Cook & Sons, a classic voyage, with a suite in the most comfortable hotel booked in advance, the services of a trained nurse, and the promise of a nice, docile elephant), shall I look emaciated, as I did yesterday on board Papadakis's boat (after fleeing from Teheran, crossing Anatolia, embarking as a stowaway at Smyrna and landing at Naples, where Kim's cure failed completely), or shall I reveal my true face, no longer the face of a brawler and juggler, forever playing to the gallery, but that of the contemplative, which I have never erased to be, even in the wildest moments of my eventful life? I know him so well, this inside-out brahmin, this boxer who trains by punching his shadow on the wall and studies himself in order to increase his speed, improve his technique, his reflexes, his counterattack, but who also knows how to take his punishment, for there are days when he faces a furious adversary, instead of his own shadow, in an adventure with a fellow-human being, outside the boxing-ring and far from all spectators, and comes back thrashed and defeated. Count my scars! Not all of them are visible, and in any case they are nothing to be proud of. (If you play rough, you must expect to get hurt.)

****

I met Picasso one day, in front of his house in rue La Boetie.

'Come up with me,' said Picasso, 'I'll paint your portrait. Nowadays I work only for posterity.'

'Then you can stick posterity up your arse,' I replied, 'I'm not coming.'

This was in 1929, at the start of the world-wide financial crisis. , I felt weary and, for the first time in my life, was about to fall ill.

In fact, a whole series of celebrities had come to pose for Picasso. It was after his 'Ingres' period, in which Picasso had drawn so many | fine portraits that really captured the likeness of the sitter (
horresco referens!)
: his wife Olga, the dancer; Bebe Errazuriz; Igor Stravinsky. Now Picasso was devoting himself to a more synthetic, more contrived, more conventional genre, which probably amused him, but was much less pure since it tended towards effigy, towards immortality. I called this his 'David' epoch, and Cocteau had posed for him during this period, wearing a bathrobe of some sort, with an ode in his hand, and Picasso had made him look like Lamartine, for this demon painter, with his right eye like a jealous Spaniard's and < his left eye like a funnel, turning inward, incisive, pitiless and strangely fixed when he looks at you, is not without a certain sarcasm and malice; giving rein to his clever and terrible vice, this devil had seized upon the derisive smile of the old Voltaire and, by heaven knows what maleficent trick, had twisted it into a lock of | hair, like a horse's forelock, and had stuck this postiche on his - model's head, so that poor Jean still wears this cabalistic toupee in the middle of his forehead, only now he has bleached it, and the lock of this Voltairean mulatto tends towards brick-red and it is the first thing one notices. It makes me very sad when I meet this Parisian Prince Charming, as if Jean were wearing a crepe band on his spirits, a kind of rusty mourning.