No sooner had we cleared the port than a fog settled on the ship. I still hadn’t been able to force myself below, so I stood leaning against the railing watching the gray water slip by at twenty knots. They were taking it slow. This was a luxury cruise.
The deck was not entirely deserted, with perhaps a dozen other men scattered about. There wasn’t a woman to be seen. Though the beers had helped, I was still on the verge of nausea. Lunch might do me some good, and then a nap. I went below.
Jay was still on his bunk, propped up against a pillow, reading
Henderson The Rain King,
a good novel for someone on his way to Africa.
“You know we’re not allowed run of the ship?” I asked.
He looked up and nodded, his face amused. “You missed lunch,” he said, “such as it was.”
I looked at my watch. “It shouldn’t be for another half hour.”
“That’s for the other classes. We eat first here.”
“Why don’t they let us know?” I was whining, annoyed. What the hell was I doing here?
He put his book down, motioning me to sit on the bunk beside him. “You’ve gotta understand something, Doug. This here is really nameless class. Bottom of the rung. The goddamn frogs would probably treat animals better. So what if you miss a meal? You think anybody gives a shit? That’s why most of the men stay here all the time. Meals are served when they arrive, and that’s that. See? The only people who go
dortoir
are African blacks, except for people who, generally speaking, don’t know what it’s like and decide to save a few bucks, like I suppose you did. But you know, a few days here and you’ll be glad you did it. It’s an eye-opener, I tell you.”
But I didn’t want an eye-opener. I needed some rest, a few days when I wouldn’t have to deal with things. I went up to the bar and ordered another Heineken and a bag of peanuts, but they served only an African beer called Stork—not bad, considering. The peanuts were the best I’d ever had. I sat near a porthole, just about at the waterline, and nursed the beer, feeling that afterward I would go and lie down.
Two men came up and greeted me cordially in French, asking if they could sit at my table. There weren’t any other free chairs, and I motioned that they were welcome. After a short conversation of many smiles and halting French, they began chatting with each other. I finished the beer, descended to my bunk, and lay down. Jay had gone somewhere. I dozed off.
I was awakened later by two men passing my bed, holding between them an enormous pot and banging a heavy ladle against it. It was a far cry from our half-hour bell at Tossa, and it woke me with a start. A large area had been cleared in the room, and makeshift tables had been set up—sheets of plywood laid across wooden workhorses. The men were lining up to the pot and accepting the food, which was dished into shallow tin pans. I got up, groggily, and waited my turn. Jay appeared from out of nowhere and stood behind me.
“Chow time,” he said happily. “Feel better? Get any sleep?”
“A little.”
The man at the pot handed me a spoon with the dish, and ladled some slop onto it.
“What is this?” I asked Jay.
“Better not to ask.”
The table was set with tin cups and metal pitchers full of wine. I remembered the salesgirl’s comment that wine was served twice a day, and wondered if she’d ever seen
dortoir.
There were also lumps of what appeared to be mildew on plates spaced every couple of feet. This, I found, was cheese.
It was a very noisy meal. One of the men at another table was standing on the bench and apparently auctioning clothes.
“Best time for it,” Jay explained, “with everybody gathered around.”
Somebody down the table from me asked me to pass down the wine pitcher, and I grabbed for it and picked it up with my left hand. The man next to me slapped my arm and forced me to put it down. Everyone was scowling at me. I looked around quizzically.
Jay picked up the pitcher and passed it, saying a few words in French and gesturing at me. In a moment, the tension had passed and everyone began talking again. He spooned himself a mouthful of food, then said to me, conversationally, across the table, “Don’t use your left hand. That’s your ass-wiping hand.”
“But I’m left-handed.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s no joke. They take it seriously.”
I transferred even my spoon then to my right side, and looked at the dish before me. It was a mixture of lentils and something, but I was hungry, and dipped my spoon in.
“They must be having squab upstairs tonight,” Jay said, looking down into his tin.
“Why do you say that?”
He took something from the lentils and held it out for me to see. It was the head of a pigeon, its feathers still intact. I swallowed hard, got up, and went back to my bunk.
The next morning, I felt better. Somehow the thought that I’d spent a night there made the place less terrifying. When I’d opened my eyes, the lights had been off, and it might have been the middle of the night. Within minutes, though, I heard sounds on the steps and then saw the cooks coming through with another pot and something steaming. The lights went on, followed almost immediately by the cassettes.
Breakfast wasn’t much better than dinner had been, but I was getting hungrier. There was a brew resembling coffee—a thin, brown mixture of water, sugar, coffee, chicory, and chocolate—and bits of the last evening’s cheese, and some stale bread that had all too obviously been served to the better classes some time in the past. I did drink some of the coffee, and ate a bit of the bread.
To my surprise, I found that there were showers, and although they were open, dormitory style, they were fine. Hot water, even. A real pleasure after Tossa. The toilets, however, were simply holes in the floor with footrests lifted maybe an inch from the level. I squatted, dripping from the shower, while an African came in and, groaning majestically, performed naturally the same act which caused me so much embarrassment. When he finished, I realized that Jay had not been kidding about my left hand. The man dipped his in a water-filled Campbell’s soup can, and wiped himself. Then he stood, arranged his robe, and smiling broadly at me, left the room. When I finished, I turned the shower back on and stepped under it, feeling foolish—foolish for the way I was—but perfectly justified nonetheless.
The day turned out to be a good one. I felt so much better than I had the day before that I found myself taking pleasure in little things—a moment of sunlight through the fog on the deck, the taste of peanuts in the bar, Jay’s conversation. We did stick together after I came back to the
dortoir
after breakfast and my shower. It turned out that he’d been in Africa for two years in the Peace Corps, and was returning from his vacation.
“You know what’s funny about this
dortoir
thing,” he said, when I’d asked him how he’d come to be there, “is that the Africans are used to this sort of thing. Maybe it’s presumptuous of me to say so, but I think they’ve got it better here than most of them do in their villages. At least here they get three meals a day. That’s outrageous. Nobody eats that well in the bush. It’s only we Anglo-Europeans that take it hard, and not even me so much anymore. The only reason it got to me, the first time I came
dortoir,
was that I was looking forward to a bit of Europe, and didn’t want to see any more of Africa until I got back. But it’s interesting to me to see how the frogs really treat them. Look at the bastards now.”
We were up on the deck. Above us, on the bridge, a group of the “upper-class” tourists had gathered to look down at us, as though we were in the zoo.
“Pricks,” he said to me. Then he cupped his hand over his mouth and looking up, yelled, “Hey! Never seen humans before?” Then he laughed.
It was still cold on the deck, as deserted as it had been the day before. Jay took something from the jacket he wore and put it in his mouth.
“Want some dope?” he asked. “Moroccan kef. Good shit.”
I’d be a liar if I said I’d never been around marijuana. I’d lived in L.A. and knew that the major component of its smog was not automobile exhaust, as was generally believed, and I was in that kind of mood, so I took a few tokes. The blacks on deck with us didn’t even seem to notice. After a while we went below and I bought Jay a few beers and told him a little about my time in Tossa. Then, once again, I became the center of attention when I started writing a letter to a friend in California. A crowd of the
noirs
gathered, amazed to see me writing left-handed. Apparently this was a serious thing, but since it involved no one else, everyone only laughed and seemed to think I was some kind of magician.
I ate lunch in a haze. Between the beer and the marijuana, the food didn’t bother me, and I ate heartily. I forget what it was, but the main ingredient was rice. Afterward, I took another nap, and sometime late in the afternoon rejoined Jay in the bar. He was still reading.
“Good book?”
“Yeah,” he said, not very convincingly. “I’ve read it four times already.”
“Then why are you reading it again?”
“Why not?” he said. “Want a beer?”
We got to talking about what I was doing on the ship, and where I was getting off, and what I did when I wasn’t traveling.
I laughed. “I don’t do much traveling.”
“You’re here.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve just spent five months in Spain.”
“True.”
“So what do you do when you’re not traveling?”
I told him a little more about Lea. I don’t know if it was good or not, but I felt better talking about it. We drank a lot of beer, and by the time I went down to dinner I felt completely comfortable with
dortoir,
with Jay, and with the men there. The next day we’d be docking in Casablanca, then leaving for the Canaries in the evening.
There was an American Western, dubbed in French, shown after dinner, and Jay translated the translation for me. One of the men near us got sick near the end of the movie, though, and we decided to clear out and let the smell subside. The bar was closed, so we worked our way up the floors to the deck. Jay smoked some more dope, but I’d had enough. The water had an eerie phosphorescent glow and seemed to reflect itself back on the fog. After a few minutes, Jay got cold and went below, leaving me pacing with my thoughts.
Sometimes it seemed to me that the whole thing had been planned. By whom, I hadn’t the slightest idea. It just seemed somehow contrived. Maybe Lea had made all her important decisions before leaving California, and had latched onto Mike as a vehicle.
You bet.
The thing was, I became aware, or was becoming aware, that I was starting to feel again. I didn’t know how long it had been since anything had mattered to me, but now I couldn’t deny that, no matter what else I could say about the whole thing, it had made a difference.
The ship belched, and the noise brought me back to the deck. The fog had lifted, and I could make out the faintest lights just on the horizon. I wondered if they were Africa. Maybe Gibraltar. Or maybe just the phosphorous where the clouds licked down near the water.
It was cold. I hadn’t yet let myself really think about Lea being gone. I could say it, but it hadn’t sunk in, and suddenly I found myself visualizing her getting ready for bed, her slim body quickly graceful without clothes, moving like a skittish doe. But really, at base, not at all timid. Just careful, watchful.
What the hell had gotten into her?
And suddenly it was clear to me what I should do. I should get off the ship tomorrow and fly to Marseilles and find her. Now I was getting better. The despair had lifted a little and I’d try to live again. We’d work it out. This thing with Mike was only a silly infatuation, and she’d outgrow it eventually.
But no sooner had I thought that than I began to feel that old constraint again, that deadening calm that had as much done me in as Sean’s passion had him. Sean had, at least, if you’d excuse the expression, gone out alive. Feeling something. Pain? Maybe there’s something ennobling about that keen a pain. With Lea, I’d slowly turned into a nothing. Who could blame her for leaving me? Mike offered something, even if it turned out not to be there.
Then I realized how strong a part of our early love had been the dreams we’d believed in, even if they hadn’t been realistic. We’d planned things together. First the house, and then trips, classes, anything to keep us looking ahead. When had it stopped? Two or three years ago. And then Lea had suggested this vacation. Was believing that I would finally start writing a novel any more ridiculous than believing that she and Mike would find his girlfriend?
The wind felt good against my face. We were making pretty decent time, and the sea was picking up somewhat. I grinned and breathed in the cold and salty air through my teeth. We dipped and I heard a wave smack against the bow. Those definitely were lights off to port.
I can trace it all back now pretty easily. I mean how I’d come to stop thinking anything made any difference. It had begun, innocently enough, with an article I hadn’t wanted to write. Of course, that had happened before, but this time it had been different. It really had been quite a long time ago. I remember it was one of those lifestyle stories that you now see in every magazine you pick up. I’d realized as I was pecking away at the keys that everybody we knew had this commitment to the way they lived their lives rather than what they did with themselves. We’d all dressed right, and talked right, and went to parties and either drank or did drugs, and laughed a lot, and it had all been routine. But worse had been the kind of hip cynicism that had gone with it, that had bored in under the routines, and left you with nothing.