Carmen Boullosa - They're Cows, We're Pigs

After the murder of Pineau, my first impulse was to get away from Tortuga. Although through him I had learned to love it, the place now repulsed me as the land that was sheltering his murderers. There was not time enough to bring this first impulse to pass. A second one erupted immediately, and more forcefully: not to abandon Tortuga until I found out whose hand it was that held the knife which killed Pineau, the hand that poisoned le Nègre Miel slowly with that substance I was not familiar with and which brought on his melancholy, his loss of interest in living, his desire to give in, and finally his death: a poison on which, if I were to baptize it, I would lay the name of “desolation.” I began by suspecting that Pineau’s purchase of me may well have been, yes, because I was the book written by le Nègre Miel, but especially because of one page that had tempted Pineau’s heart so much that he contradicted his principles with regard to slavery; yet now I did not think le Nègre Miel’s wisdom was the reason for it, since Pineau had roundly refused to make use of his arts and would look on with reprehension in his eyes whenever I picked up some herb — but because of a page that Smeeks himself was unaware of. Could it be that le Nègre Miel had not written it? If that were the case, it might well be connected somehow with The House in Port Royal, since he had also kept silent about all that. Then I was assaulted by wild fantasies which featured menstrual blood in some strange way, but I frightened them off, knowing they were absurd, and I became aware of not being able to think clearly, of being unable to tie up the loose ends, of being totally at a loss, of not comprehending, once again, that Smeeks understood nothing at all about any of this. Who had killed them? For what reason had they been killed?

Passing in review the people they both would visit frequently, searching for coincidences, yet was I unable to come up with anything other than the afternoons when le Nègre Miel and Pineau absented themselves from me in order to attend the Society’s meetings, wherever it was they met. Certain that the answer would lie there, on those afternoons when I was not with them, those afternoons which were forbidden me, I had gone to Jamaica to have a word with Isabelle.

I never did get to talk to her. I stayed drunk for several days and do not recall whether I went to The House even once to sleep it off or whether I slept at all or ate or anything else that happened to me, because I lost all consciousness of myself; and when I regained it I was signing a paper with a name that was not mine, had never been mine, and on which I had let fall a drop of my blood. My signature said, “Le Trépaneur.”

The paper was the Contract prepared by the Admiral before our departure:

Laus Deo.

We owe obedience only to God, apart from whom there is no other master in these lands but ourselves, lands over which, risking our lives, we have wrested dominion from a country which in its turn has usurped them from the Indians.

These are the rules of the contract that every freebooter must follow:

Article 1. We, the signers below, receive and recognize L’Olonnais as our good Admiral, with the following conditions:

that if any of us disobeys him in anything he may command, he is allowed to punish such a man in acccordance with his crime; or that he will desist from doing so, if the majority of votes goes against him.

Article 2. As Vice Admiral we recognize Antoine Du Puis, and as Captain on Land, Michel Le Basque.

Et cetera, et cetera. The Contract set out the basis for the division of the booty, down to the last detail, as well as the compensation for the loss of one eye or both, of one or both legs, of fingers, hands, and arms, under the supposition that if there is no booty there is no payment; but that whoever lost any part of his body would be owed his share until enough booty became available, if not on the expedition that we were undertaking, then on the following one, or on as many expeditions as might be necessary to pile up the amount with which the rest of the pirates would be able to settle the debt they were promising in advance to be responsible for.

After the signing of the Contract, we all embarked for Tortuga. I picked up my things, the surgeon’s tools that had been Pineau’s up till then, and some weapons that had also belonged to him. I would not be telling the truth were I to say that an enormous sadness overwhelmed me when I went into the cabin to get them, I would not be telling the truth because that was not what I felt. A grim fit of distractedness struck me. I was nowhere around, although I was there. Suddenly I found myself kicking poor Euripedes, a dog we used to take care of in exchange for his looking after us, which he did very well because he always defended the doorway to the cabin— except on the night they murdered Pineau . I delivered several blows just because I ran into him, as if my stupidness were his fault, without even recalling his silence the night of Pineau’s death. He dropped his head and allowed my arrogant spirit to descend upon him. He did not even growl or show his teeth. Suddenly I was ashamed, the blows bringing me back to the cabin I had shared with my beloved Pineau, and the memory of him showered down on me, shook me up, left me in pieces, scarcely able to stand. I stooped over to scratch the dog behind the ears, yet Euripedes did not return my gaze. It was all over between us.

I never went back to the cabin. Whenever I returned to Tortuga, I would sleep any old where, like the other pirates, nor did I practice as a surgeon while on land as Pineau had done. That day I loaded up my things and slept in the forest on Tortuga to get more herbs for my remedies, crowding as much as possible into the last little corner of time before the moment of departure.

Everything being well prepared, with 1,670 men in eight ships, after making an inspection of the arms we each one of us would rely on and the artillery aboard the ships, we set sail at the end of April and proceeded toward Bayala on the northern coast of Hispaniola to take on enough smoked meat for the voyage. There, a party of hunters joined us of their own free will, having provided us with all manner of necessary supplies. We spent May and June on that part of the island. There, in actuality, my life as a pirate began. I attached myself to them, sleeping a dream called “surprise,” and when we arrived at Bayala I began to live like they did, sleeping every night in a different place. I realized that ever since leaving Europe I had been living like a woman, repeating the routine of going to sleep every day in the same protected corner and at about the same hour. There are so many who live that way — like women, shut up behind the walls of a convent, a prison, a house, a shop, hidden behind the many skirts of the one single place that shields them with its constant being there ! … From that day on, and for many years (thirty-seven), I lived a constant challenge to the sun, the wind, following the inclemencies of the strange, luminous nature of the Caribbean.… We freebooters are the mirror of the day, of the untamed ocean waves: the mirror of the squall, the storm, the fiercely cruel wind called Huracán! To be able to be this reflection of the days as they go by, we reject any routine, every routine. We do not eat every day, but when we do eat, our tables are always set differently: sumptuous and costly, or simply meager, but never the same: tables set for those who do not live like women!

I stopped being Smeeks and became one of the Brethren in the Society of the Coast, and was baptized by them under the name of Le Trépaneur (a word which means someone who bores into the skull), as I said before, and as I told myself day and night in order to convince myself of it, to understand it, to know it, to make it so.