Terese Svoboda - Pirate Talk or Mermalade

No, not at all. The fish gives him the secret of death instead, that’s it, the fish tells him how death fights us.

We are all dying. Great gasping breaths, the hawking, then the phlegm. How can we listen?

Don’t lean on me so — the daughter possesses an eye that sees beyond all others and she uses it. Though Tataunga sends her to every part of the sea, to every shore that the seas wash up to find her sister and her secret, he dies before he hears it.

I have the eye. See — a whale’s eye.

Give it here. That eye is mine.

I was given it, I didn’t take it from you and I need it now, to fight off Tataunga with mine eye.

It stinks. You don’t want it.

I’ve had it too long to stink, unless it be the stink of my skin against all these washed-up clothes.

Keep the eye then, you cur. Tataunga brings his hooks and axes. I see him bury himself inside the whale’s chest.

I’ll bury myself.

You’ll get sand down your gullet, you’ll choke on it.

You are without respect! Tataunga comes to cut out your tongue.

Put down that cutlass. It’s my cutlass.

The palms wave as if to attack, we must fight Tataunga.

All right, we’ll fight the palms so they don’t cut out your tongue. As long as you don’t harm the stick I walk on. Tataunga!

Tataunga! Not so close. I think you are too close.

The battle ends with Tataunga drinking a cup of grog with us—

— and weeping over his lost daughter.

What about the daughter?

His tears fall upon the lost daughter and they turn into treasure, pieces o’ eight in bags of silk.

Finally, treasure. Which Tataunga doesn’t need or want so we hasten to take it.

But you are Tataunga.

I thought you were the daughter.

The fish?

I am not the fish either. I am not even the whale. The secret! The secret! I’ll cut it out of them.

Let me seize that sword of yours. You’ll do yourself harm.

My eye! You have cut mine eye! You have poked out my eye!

Don’t — scream — so.

My eye, my eye!

It’s just the one, you can do all your looking with the other.

Get away. Get away. My eye!

Hold it with your thumb to stop it bleeding.

Monster!

We’ll get you a patch, a lovely patch out of hide, or a black swatch. It’s not like losing another leg.

What am I to do? I’m blind.

You are the one-legged brother who creeps, and now you will have to creep alongside me.

Curse Tataunga and all the Higher Powers!

It’s a blessing is what you must think — your one eye will see what comes next where two cannot, they are too busy conferring.

You dream that. What would I see?

A man with a fork rising from the sea to take out the other.

Mercy!

I don’t know how you see anything through your one eye.

It’s a ghost boat yonder, or nothing. It’s a boat that floats for sure, that’s all.

— A square-rigger?

A true boat, and it coming toward us!

Indeed.

Let’s flap our rags, let’s jump from a tree! Fire! The fire! Coax up the fire!

No time. They’ll be ashore before we can find enough kindling. Besides, they’ll never stop if we look like brigands drying our takings over a fire.

Southbound.

Southbound will be fine. Southbound will be just dandy.

Southbound it is. And a big fine ship it is. The newest of sails, all rigged right.

The bones of the burnt hull lure them.

How will they see us?

They see us, they’re tacking.

We are but two castaways from a boat caught in the rocks and burnt, that is our story — ah, what was the name of the vessel you heard was refitted?

The Mayflower or the Maryflower, some-such.

We are two castaways from the Mayflower, all that was left of the hundred of your countrymen accosted by brigands and left for dead after the burning boat catched on the rocks.

The flag is English?

It is. But the tale of being beset by something like the Frobisher ship is better, with its fraud so long ago of saying they were looking for the Passage, poking about and picking up women and not discovering — everyone knew Frobisher was a pirate. We begged to be put off the Frobisher-type ship and die here, rather than go on with the likes of that kind of captain.

Pirates like to leave a captain. I vote for the Mayflower. The less piratical our boatsmen the better.

Oh, bother — the Mayflower or the Maryflower then. Move your hand from the glass, you hide the sight of the crew. A monk’s on deck — see his cowl?

He will be kind to us.

Unless it’s a Moor in disguise. I can’t tell from those robes.

If only I had mine eye.

They need water enough, with a barrel like that.

I’ve forgotten what happened to my leg.

You fell into a well behind the topiary, the topiary behind the — what, what? — it comes to me — the chapel at Edgerton. Your eyepatch is from a fight between us when we were but infants. Which is true more or less since we’re naught but boys now. Big orphan boys.

It’s a fine thing you’re still so light of beard. They like it when there’s a woman. That frill off MacAdam’s cuff does the convincing. And the skirt from the washed up trunk.

Hanged.

It can’t be. I dreamed feathers flying into the dark of the night, it didn’t die, it came back. I should’ve eaten it long ago.

Leave it be. It found us water.

Hanged.

It led us to the brink first.

We must boast that the parrot will find a port, that it was the best of luck for us having tamed it.

Not in all the water of the seas I have drunk will that parrot be luck for us. Damned bird.

Hanged, hanged.

Which of the clothes to put on top for me?

Plaid, it’s plaid, a bold plaid it is. There may be some who fled Scotland.

I shall go all enraged — I was all set to land at a new port for the time-pieces when the pirates o’erpowered my ship. But I need a paper that says you took me. I don’t want to complicate the road we are set on by not having the right history.

But it would declare me a pirate!

Yes, well, maybe we would surprise them better as two warring sides.

Better we double our forces and turn on them just as they turn the key in your lock.

You were fighting athwart the boat in defense of me.

Hanged.

Get the bird off my shoulder.

I’ll stuff it inside your shirt for a heaving bosom.

Ah, yes, that could fool them.

And hide my cutlass under your petticoats on a belt around your leg. They won’t think of you with such a weapon. Or should I be carving the wood with it: “The Fine Maiden Hurries to the Dock for Communication from Her Lover?”

No, I will act as a kind of closet for the cutlass. Then after all the introductions, I will fall in a faint in the excitement so you can cover my face and carry me on board with all those weak lady excuses they make. Then we’ll poke them.

I’m bound into being a pirate.

It is our best chance. Over here! Over here! We’ve been besieged by cannibals daily.

Don’t say that — they won’t land.

They all like to say they’ve killed the cannibals in defense of the ladies. Hope they don’t confuse us with them though. But cannibals have far more teeth than we show. Please — mind the rocks. The rocks are what caught us — the great boat the Maryflower —

The Mayflower —

The Mayflower, god rest our ship and all the souls upon it, it was cast onto the rocks and there met its fiery end. Here! Over here!

The rocks caught us but they’ve spread for you due to the flag you’re flying. Delighted to have you come ashore.