Fo'castle Waltz

The longshoremen were busy on the afterdeck and there were a few men who had come aboard who looked as if they had something to do with the ship's business. One, a round-faced, pasty-complexioned young guy with slicked-down black hair and wide-open, long-lashed eyes was talking to some of the deck crew. He said he was an American down there with a three-year contract to work for the steel company, that it was terribly lonesome down here with no one to talk to—none of the Argentinians spoke English. Then he suggested in an offhand manner if some of the fellows wanted to see some places in Rio Santiago he'd take us around. He knew all the best houses, swell girls, etc.

Perry shoved Joe and me off in a comer—again. Again he had some dope.

"Lissen, that guy's a pimp. Don't lissen to him. He's just roundin' up business for some bordellos he's workin'."

"Well, if he knows de houses," Joe said.

"What do ya mean if he knows d'houses? He can't know 'em any better dan me. I tell ya I know dis port—I shipped down here before. And furdermore, he's a pimp I tell ya. He's commoicial. Sure, he gets a commission."

Well, that topped it. Joe shrugged his big shoulders, dug his hands in his pockets, and nodded his head. Of course, if Perry could get it for us wholesale, he was amenable. Our pact to do Rio Santiago together still stood.

There was a lot of hustling around the deck that afternoon, but the crew hadn't much work to do. It took a long time before that tremendous derrick on the flatboat had ponderously moved itself into a position alongside the ship so that it could pluck first one, then the other, big boiler off our decks. We just stood by to unlash the chains that held them down. There were no watches now and all the crew were day men. I wondered how experts like Joe, Perry, Slim, and the rest would manage to keep their records and hands clean when we started the sloppy port work I heard was in store for us.

When we knocked off that evening we lined up in the officers' mess and the Captain, seated behind a table flanked by the Purser with his account books, dealt out Argentine money—an advance against what we were to be paid off in New York,

I drew the equivalent of ten good American dollars in Argentine pesos—the most unconvincing money I ever held in my hand. Those pesos, a two-inch by three strip of smudged tissue paper, rolled up in our palms like the leftover debris you find in a little-used old coat pocket. If I'd ever decide to make a career of counterfeiting, that's the sort of money I'd start with. An interwoven complicated engraving all over the note and then dip it in a greasy bath of dishwater and let it linger in a pool of spilled coffee, and you have a perfect peso worth, in those days, forty cents real money.

Having collected our money, off we dashed for the bathroom. What a splashing, scrubbing, shaving (except me, I had a beard) everybody gave himself. It looked like a big night. Thirty-two bridegrooms anointing themselves for the community brides...

Everyone was eating ashore—no slops for anybody tonight. After a lot of ducking and squirming around in front of the fo'castle mirrors—almost everybody had a piece of mirror clipped on the inside of his locker door—everybody had his necktie knotted to his satisfaction and fancy armbands arranged on the sleeves of their striped silk shirts.

Let me pause a moment on those gaily striped, heavy silk voluminous shirts cut from some immense Joseph's coat, or patterned from one of the color schemes of some exotic jungle flower. They were beautiful and all—because somehow you'd ruin them if you washed them—all smelled of old sweats on the mixed perfumed bosoms of the whores of half the seaports of the world.

The night was still young as the crew began to troop off the ship in groups of three or four, all dressed up and looking strange and unfamiliarly commonplace in their going-ashore clothes. It seems all the younger guys wore suits too big for them—the sort people buy for their sons expecting them to grow into them—and the older men all wore suits too tight, as if they'd grown beyond what they had expected. The majority wore caps or hats they'd worn aboard ship. Perry—that large flat cloth cap with the broken peak; Chips—his hard, smudged straw; others dug out hats and caps they'd carefully stowed away. Big Joe wore a sharp straw hat on the back of his head. The Fat Guy, tightly buttoned in a suit that showed about six inches of heavy tan sweater between his vest and his trousers, had a dented derby perched on his shaggy mop. I was no Beau Brummel either. I hadn't any good clothes with me. I hadn't left them home—I didn't have any. The brown suit I wore looked as if it had been hung out in the rain and had been rolled up and stowed away dripping wet. I marveled how well pressed everybody else's suit looked when they unfolded them from their cramped lockers.