Gene Wolfe - Pirate Freedom

We unloaded at Coruna and were paid off, each of us going up to the captain one at a time and having the book explained to us before we got our money. That was when I found out that I had worked for a week to pay for two shirts and two pairs of pants.

I will stop here and explain that I still had the little bag I had brought from the monastery, but there was not much in it besides one pair of slop-chest pants and a slop-chest shirt. I had lost my sandals in Havana, kicking them off so I could run faster, and my T-shirt had been worn to rags and thrown away. You know what happened to my jeans.

When the captain had explained everything and paid me, he told me it would probably be a couple of weeks before the next voyage. He would see his family while the ship went into dry dock to get her bottom scraped and so on. But when she was ready to go again, he hoped I would come back and sign on. That made me feel good. I thanked him for it, and I meant it.

After I had been paid, Senor asked me to help him take his parrots to the bird seller. I said sure and off we went, him carrying three cages and me carrying three. The cages were wood, woven out of sticks and tied with twine that the parrots kept picking at with those big strong bills parrots have. They were not heavy, and I had carried and cleaned them many a time.

The bird shop was interesting, and I had plenty of time to look around in it while the bird man and Senor argued over prices. There were three parrots there already, gray ones from Africa that would talk to you and do everything they could think of to keep you with them. They were all hoping to be let out of their cages, but they did not know how to say that. It seemed to me then that it was about the only thing they did not know how to say, and I decided that if I ever had a parrot of my own, I would not cage it. If it stayed with me, fine. If it flew away, that would be fine, too.

Then a young lady came in, wanting to buy a bird. She saw Senor's and got him to take each of them out so she could see it better. The bird seller kept explaining to her that they were new birds who had not been around people much and might die before long, could not talk, and so on. I got one of the redheaded green ones to say, "Pretty miss! Pretty miss!," cocking its head. It was something I had said to all of them sometimes. After that, she had to have that one. She asked Senor how much, and he told her a lot more than he had been trying to get from the bird seller. So everybody argued about that for a while-the lady and an old woman in black who was with her, and Senor.

While all the palaver was going on, her maid and I were looking each other over. She would peek at me, and I would get embarrassed because I had been staring and look away. Then she would look away and I would start staring again. She had been carrying three packages and a shopping basket when she came in, but she put them down and got out her fan, and fanned herself, and looked at me over the top of it. I kept thinking of how it would be if the two of us were out on a little boat of our own, sailing far away to someplace wonderful.

Finally the lady bought the parrot she wanted, and told the girl to take the cage, saying they would go home now.

"Oh, Senora Sabina, I can't possibly carry all this and that heavy cage, too! Couldn't this sailor carry them for us?" So I ended up with the parrot cage and the shopping basket, walking behind the maid. She was round in all the right places, and it was a nice view. We got to the lady's house a lot sooner than I wanted to, and she smiled and thanked me and gave me a little money. The maid gave me a wink, which I liked a lot better.

I went back to the bird shop thinking about a whole lot of things, including a few I was pretty ashamed of. Senor was still there, and eventually we went off to a cantina together, got something to eat, and drank wine. I was scared the whole time, thinking he might want me to pay for us both. Do not get me wrong here. I would not have done it. But he was a ship's officer and I was just a common sailor, and I was afraid he might make trouble for me.

It turned out that I did not know him as well as I had thought. He paid for everything when we split up. He had drunk most of the bottle, but I had drunk a good bit myself, and eaten every bit as much as he had. They had been cooking some kind of fritters in that cantina, and those were the best things I had eaten since the mango in Veracruz.

Probably I do not have to tell you what I did after we split up. I went back to Sabina's house and hung around outside hoping to see her maid again. Finally I went to the door, very polite, and told the manservant who answered it that I was looking for work, any kind of work, and that I had carried things for Senora earlier that day. He said there was nothing and shut the door in my face.

When you read this you will probably say I should have gone away at that point, but I did not. I went around to the back and hung around there some, and finally I saw her looking out of a window. All the windows had iron grilles over them, and big shutters that could be closed over the grilles, too. But the shutters were open, and she blew me a kiss through the grille. I blew her a kiss back, and she went away.

After that, I knew I would not see her again that night. I ran into Vasco and Simon, and asked them where they were putting up. They told me about their inn, saying it was not too big and about as cheap as anything decent and had good food and wine. So I went there. They were splitting a room. I told the innkeeper I wanted a room to myself, but a cheap one. As cheap as I could get it, as long as it was clean. He said fine and put me up in a guardilla, a little attic room with one window high above the street. I would not have wanted to sleep in that room in the winter, and it was up three flights of stairs. But when a man has gotten used to climbing the mast four or five times on his watch, stairs do not bother him. It was quiet and cool, too. I have stayed in better places, but after the forecastle it was just plain wonderful.

In the morning I noticed there was a little church near the inn. I could see a lot of steeples from the window of my new room, and that one looked really close. So after breakfast I went in there and sat down, trying to think things over. When I finally got up, I saw this Spanish priest sitting at the back. He said, "Would you like to talk to someone, my son?"

So I sat down next to him, and told him I was from Cuba, and that I felt like I had left God behind me there.

"You have not. If you had, you would never have come here seeking Him."

I said that did not make sense to me.

"It makes sense to Him, my son. Our foolishness is His wisdom, in this and many other things."

He did not look like the priest in Mexico, or even remind me of him much, but I said I did not have much to do that day and would do some work for him around the church if he wanted me to.

He shook his head. "I cannot pay you, my son."

"I've got money, Padre. Not a lot, but some."

After that we talked a lot more. I told him about being an altar boy, not saying it was at Our Lady of Bethlehem, and he wanted to know if I had ever learned to play the organ.

I said sure.

"Really? Would you play for me, my son, if I find someone to pump for you?"

So he got his servant to pump and I played three or four pieces I knew by heart, trying my best to keep them slow. After that he showed me a lot of church music. The notation was a little different, but he explained that, and I played a couple of the easy ones. That made him really happy, and he made me promise to play for his mass next morning.

"It is a shame, my son, that you cannot play strings as well. You might play and sing beneath the window of the senorita you speak of. It is how women are won here, more often than not."