Gene Wolfe - Pirate Freedom

I said anybody could play the guitar, but that my voice was not much. Which is the truth.

"You err, my son. Few can play a guitar as well as you play this organ. It may be you underrate your voice as well."

After I left there, I looked at guitars in some shops. I did not want a cheap one, and even the cheap ones cost a lot. The good ones cost more than I had, and if I had bought one I would not have been able to eat or pay next day's rent. That night I went back to the house and around to the alley, and waited for three or four hours, hoping to see the girl I had carried the parrot for. I never did, and when the lights went out I went back to my room.

Next morning I got up early and went to the padre's church. The padre sang the mass, his servant pumped, and I played whenever the padre told me to. After mass he heard confessions, mine included. You already know everything I confessed to. When he had given me my penance (which was not much) he asked me to wait until he had finished.

I did, of course, and when he had heard the last old lady he wanted to know whether I had a guitar. Of course I said I did not.

"I have my father's. It is precious to me."

"Sure," I said. "I'd love to have anything my father owned."

"But you do not? There were many children?"

I said no, but I did not want to talk about my family. I knew he was about to ask if my father was dead, and I did not want to have to say he had not been born yet, which by then I was pretty sure was the truth.

"Very well, my son, I will ask no more. Will you play my father's guitar for me? I would like very much to hear it sound again."

It was out of tune, which I expected, and I had to tune it by ear. But it was a good one, with a good, rich tone. I played some songs that had been old when I was a kid. He sang a couple of the songs his father used to sing for him and his mother. The tunes were pretty easy, and I could play along without much trouble.

That night I was walking past a cantina when I heard somebody playing a really good guitar inside. So I went in and got a glass of wine, and sat around and listened. He played a song all the customers knew, and they sang it. A lot of them could sing pretty well-more than I would have expected.

After that he passed the hat, and just about everybody put something in. He was a gypsy, and played gypsy style, but I did not know that then.

The next day I played at mass again, and when it was over I asked the padre to loan me his guitar, just for that night, promising to return it the next morning. He would not, and would not even speak to me after that, just going into the confessional and shutting the door.

After that I wandered around quite a bit, wondering how I could get him to lend it. So after mass the next day I waited until he was through hearing confessions. Then I showed him my money-not all of it, but most of it. I said that was all I had, which was pretty close to the truth, and said for him to keep it until I brought his father's guitar back, which I would the next morning.

"I do not want your silver, my son. I want my father's guitar."

"But I want my money, Padre. It's all I've got in the world."

It took a long time, but he finally agreed. I felt guilty as heck, knowing he would be worried to death. But I took the guitar that had been his father's just the same, and played at the back of the house, and sang a little. A fat cook looked out at me, then closed the shutters. I kept playing and sang a little, Spanish and Italian songs.

Finally the girl I wanted looked out of a different window, one up on the third floor, and smiled, and blew me a kiss, and closed the shutters. And I went away feeling absolutely wonderful.

After that I went to three cantinas where nobody was playing, and played and sang in each of them. (Mostly I just played, though.) I did not get as much as the old man had at that one cantina, but it was enough for me to eat next day and pay my rent. I felt like I had done pretty good-and learned a little, too, because when I went into a cantina and somebody good was playing there already, I just sat and listened.

The next day was Sunday. I went to the early mass, just like I had before, and played the organ. But when I tried to give the padre his guitar back he just asked me to play for the next mass, too. Which I did.

There were four that day, and I played at all of them. Then I said, "If you want your dad's guitar, you'd better take it, Padre. If you don't, I'll take it with me."

He smiled, but his eyes were full of tears. "Leaving all your money, my son?"

I shrugged. "I've got some more now. Not a lot, but some."

He pointed to the poor box. "Put the smallest coin you have in there, and I will return your money."

I did, and he gave me all my money back. When I had counted it, I tried to return his father's guitar again.

He would not take it. "Keep the guitar, my son. My father wanted me to give it to my own son. I do so now."

It just about had me crying, too. I swore that when I had enough to buy a good guitar for myself I would return his, and that was where we left it.

After that there is not a lot more to tell about the time I spent in Spain, and I do not enjoy telling what there is. Every morning I played the organ for morning mass, and I generally brought along the padre's guitar so he could see it was okay. (I was also afraid that it would be stolen if I left it in my room.) Then I would go back to the inn and sleep awhile like everybody did, because I would have been up late the night before playing in cantinas. A little after sundown I played for the girl I have been telling about. After a while she started talking to me through a first-floor window, and we held hands through the grille. I told her I was a sailor and I used to live in Havana. One night she came outside to talk to me. She danced when I played-she was a really good dancer-and we kissed and so on.

The next night the fat cook came out. "Master's been screaming to the sky, and Senora has been beaten to a rag because of you. Estrellita, too! Worse, and she can hardly walk. Get out!"

That was that. In the morning I gave the padre his guitar back and went down to the quay. The Santa Charita was out of dry dock and fitting out, and the captain took me back like he said he would. I was glad of it, because I knew that if I went back to my room in the inn I was going to jump. It was four floors up and cobblestones down below, so it would probably have killed me. I had needed a knife before, and I bought a regular sailor's knife with the money I had left-a big folding knife with a straight edge for cutting rope and a folding marlinspike. Every time I looked at the wooden handle of it, I would think of the padre's guitar. They were not really the same, but I did. I lost it when they chained me up on the Weald.

It took us another ten days to finish fitting out and load cargo. The cargo was mostly tools for carpenters and blacksmiths and so on, but there was a lot of classy stuff too, bolts of China silk and good clothes.

We felt pretty classy ourselves, with fresh paint on all over, the ship recaulked, new sails, and new rigging. We shook out for a couple of days to make sure everything worked. I got seasick in the forecastle and got knocked down for it, and when I felt better I had it out with that guy. I was younger and faster, I had more reach, and I meant to kill him. He was stronger and maybe forty pounds heavier, and he just about killed me. Eventually I got him down, and pretty soon he begged for mercy. When he did, I let him up. It takes a lot to make a sailor beg.

About halfway across the Atlantic we ran into a storm. Some of the other guys said they had been in worse, and my guess is they were telling the truth. That one was plenty bad enough for me, and I know the captain thought it might sink us. For three days and three nights, it bounced us around and rolled us like a ninepin. One time there was green water three feet deep in the waist. We lost a man overboard, and just about lost another one-the other one being me. Nobody could have slept on that ship, we just passed out when we got into our hammocks. We were dripping wet, but it did not matter because the weather deck was leaking water onto us anyway. Sometimes we got an hour or two of sleep before somebody yelled, "All hands!" Most often it was more like fifteen minutes.