Seagulls in My Soup (8 page)

By evening
Cresswell
was nestled cozily in the tiny, pretty little port on the north side of the island of Formentera. I knew that
Bellerophon
was sailing for Malta in a few days, and so if any of Reynaud's friends spotted her, it wouldn't be in Ibiza or anywhere near
Cresswell,
and that made me feel more easy.

Over the course of the next few years, in places as far apart as New York and Cape Town, from people as widely different as fishermen, artists, newsmen, yachtsmen, and bartenders, I pieced together what I think were some of the events which followed the episode described in this chapter.

The gunboat which approached
Aries
was Algerian. Reynaud was arrested and the boat was seized and taken back to Algiers. What happened to Reynaud during the next two years is not quite clear; no one I met seemed to know. But in 1967 he was rumored to have been one of the men involved in the kidnapping of Moise Tshombe, the exiled Katangan leader from the Congo, when Tshombe's plane, which had left a Spanish airfield, was hijacked and diverted to Algiers.

I was also told that his real name was not Reynaud, and that he had been quite prominent in the O.A.S., the French secret anti-Algerian-independence organization, at least until I knew him. I have never figured out why he should have changed sides, which evidently he did, to have been involved in the Tshombe affair.

Tshombe was first jailed, then kept incommunicado until his death in Algeria in 1969. He was living on borrowed time in any case; he had already been sentenced to death in his own country,
in absentia.

“What about
Aries
,” asked Sissie that evening.

“Named after a ram,” I replied.

“What did Aries do?”

“He got fleeced,” I said, as I prepared to write a note to Shiner Wright. It was the first letter in an exchange of correspondence to and from all parts of the globe, which continues to this day.

But I, Ulysses,

Sitting on the warm steps,

Looking over the valley,

All day long, have seen,

Without pain, without labour,

Sometimes a wild-hair'd Maenad;

Sometimes a Faun with torches;

And sometimes, for a moment,

Passing through the dark stems,

Flowing rob'd—the belov'd,

The desir'd, the divine,

Belov'd Iacchus

Ah, cool night-wind, tremulous stars!

Ah, glimmering water—

Fitful earth-murmur—

Dreaming woods!

Ah, golden-hair'd, strangely smiling Goddess,

And thou, prov'd, much enduring,

Wave-toss'd Wanderer!

Who can stand still?

Ye fade, ye swim, ye waver before me.

The cup again!

Faster, faster,

O Circe, Goddess,

Let the wild, thronging train,

The bright procession

Of eddying forms,

Sweep through my soul!

“The Strayed Reveller to Ulysses”

—Matthew Arnold

Apart from a pair of tiny, open fishing boats, and the ferry which arrived from Ibiza thrice daily,
Cresswell
was the only vessel in Formentera harbor. Apart from the chores on the boat, being talked at by Sissie, writing long-overdue letters, and shopping at the dim little store in the tiny hamlet by the port, the only thing to do was sit and look at the scenery.

Formentera harbor had two rather short, low moles. Onboard the boat, gazing over the cockpit coaming, it was almost the same as being at sea in dead calm water, only the water there was so shallow and clear and clean that we could watch shoals of angelfish and mullet swimming around over the rocky bottom, and see our anchor—set out broadside to hold the boat off the wall in case of a westerly blow—plainly, even though it was under twenty feet of diaphanous, glassy seawater.

The early-morning ferry arrived at about dawn. Her rumbling, as her propellers churned up the harbor, and the excited voices of passengers, greeters, and crew woke Sissie and me, but the noises were all good-natured, and so were we. Formentera harbor was so remote and quiet that the three daily arrivals and departures of little knots of humanity were casual comforts, and we did not resent them one bit. By the time Sissie had the tea brewed, and the bacon and eggs on a hot plate, I was usually on deck to watch the black-clad peasant women with their gravely courteous husbands and their broods of children, all spic-and-span; and their baskets and boxes, cartons and sacks, bundles and buckets, all to-ing and fro-ing and chatting away in their peculiar brand of the Catalan language.

The Formenterans appeared to be among the healthiest folk I have ever seen, and it's a fact that at the far southern end of the island there was a small hamlet, near Cape Berberia, where there were, out of a population of around 200, thirty-odd persons over the age of 100 years. It was not a rare thing to see one of the ancient men, small and sunburned, dressed all in black, scrambling up the 500-foot-high cliffs of the cape as sure-footed and agile as a goat—with a full-sized turtle, weighing 100 pounds or more, slung over his shoulders.

I have seen several places like this where people live long and die happy. I have often thought about the reason for this. Is it diet? Is it something in the water? Is it something inherited? After having observed these folk in places as far apart as Turkey and Bolivia, I conclude that there are a few traits these ancients have in common: They live without haste. They have just enough for their own needs, and they want no more. They are usually jealous of what they have, but they do not covet. Neither do they seem to resent growing old. In the main they accept it as part of life, but not with sorrow, because another thing the long-lived simple folk have in common the world over is a strong faith in the hereafter. I know there are atheists who live to a ripe old age, but I suspect that's because, naturally, they're scared of a void. Anyway, you should be rich to be an atheist. Demonstrative lack of real faith usually assuages a tremendous guilt for unearned blessings.

Formentera harbor, once the peasant families and the one or two bead-bedecked hippies, lugging their worry-bags over their shoulders, had cleared out of the way, and Sissie had clomped off to buy some eggs or to swim off the nearby beach, was a haven of peace. All across the northern horizon the hills and mountains of Ibiza swept from east to west, a vast panorama of altering shades above the continually changing grays and greens and blues of the sea.

The dawns broke, sending fiery red splashes over a nickel, leaden sea. Then the black smudges to the north turned to hills, golden toward the east; and as the sun revealed its splendor and rose along God's arc, the black shadows on the western slopes were rendered to the diminishing stars. By noon the colors of the hills across the horizon were stark smudges of variegated hues, from gold to purple to vermilion, as if some celestial painter were using Ibiza as a palette. As the afternoon passed, the undulating uplands changed to iridescent emerald, to cyan blue, to aquamarine, turquoise, and lapis lazuli; and as the sun sank below the diamond-colored sea in the west, the island became a line of indigo humps, decorated with twinkling necklaces of light. Fifteen miles away, at the western end of Ibiza, the starkly sharp 1000-foot-high rock of Es Vedra transformed its color from black to brown to beige to gold, until the sun had taken its leave, on its way to greet smoking cities and coral islands. Then, as suddenly as if it had disappeared behind a curtain, Es Vedra was gone, leaving behind only the stabbing beam of its lighthouse.

During the day, the whole time that
Cresswell
was in Formentera, Nelson stayed on the seawall, either hobbling to and fro, or lying on a fishing net in the shade. The only times he came onboard was when he saw Sissie going ashore. Then he limped around, sniffing, checking that she had performed her duties well and true, until she returned, when he took off again. His only other activities were when he accompanied me to the small, dark bar of the tiny hotel near the port for a beer or two with the small, dark fishermen. Whenever Sissie and I went ashore together (which was very rarely) Nelson stayed onboard to guard the boat. He was very jealous of this privilege—even more than he was jealous of Sissie.

For the first three days in Formentera I busied myself touching up the paintwork topsides and cleaning out the engine compartment for the first time in two years or so. The neglect hadn't been a matter of slackness on my part. It was simply that I had been on the move continuously since the engine had been installed; either in
Cresswell
or delivering other people's boats—or the weather had been far too hot for working in a close, confined space. Now, in November, it was fairly cool and ideal for working below. By the time I had finished putting two coats of white gloss paint in the bilge, it looked so clean that I was tempted to leave the hatches open, in case anyone came onboard, so I could show off. But the problem with cleaning and painting one compartment is that it makes the rest of the boat look shabby, so I diverted Sissie away from the beach in the afternoons to the main cabin, where I persuaded her to slap two coats of white gloss on those bilges, too. So after a week in Formentera
Cresswell,
while she could never pretend to be a showboat, looked fairly presentable. To my satisfaction and Sissie's utter disgust, the last pieces of seal blubber from the Arctic were routed out from below the galley stove and thrown to the angelfish, while Nelson looked on and wagged his tail.

To celebrate
Cresswell
's refurbishing I invited Sissie to join me in a hike to San Francisco Javier, the main hamlet of the island, in the center of its wind-swept plateau. This suited Sissie; she loved hiking. “Simply awf'ly
delaightful!”
she crowed. So, leaving Nelson a plate of burgoo onboard, and with Sissie in her hiking gear (knee-length khaki shorts, ditchdigger's brogues, long black woolen stockings, a shabby brown raincoat with the belt left dangling, and a sort of Rhodesian infantryman's hat perched on top of her electrically frizzy hair), we set off, with Sissie singing “Keep right on to the end of the road” at the top of her voice, and me trying to lag behind her as we passed through the hamlet, hoping that the fishermen would not think she was with me.

We wended our way along the narrow winding road, over the undulating, rocky hills, for about five miles, enjoying the air and the freedom from care. We passed hundreds of tiny, stone-walled fields and a couple of dozen gray, weather-beaten stone windmills. A few stunted, wind-sculpted trees leaned drunkenly on the horizon and in the
arroyos.
It took us about two hours to reach the main hamlet; not because Sissie was a slow walker—far from it—but because she was continually stopping and chattering away about the view. “Awf'ly
naice,”
and
“Supah . . .
Look, dahling, ovah
theah.”
She clambered over low stone walls to scamper fifty yards into a field to sniff a flower or to pet a kid goat.

“If you get any goat shit on your boots, don't take it onboard,” I admonished her as she took hold of my sailing jerkin. “We've done enough cleaning this week.”

“Such
ebsolutely
sweet little deahs!”

“We ought to nick one on the way back and roast the bugger.”

Sissie slapped my arm lightly and turned her Saxon-blue eyes on me, like a battleship's guns. “Oh,
dahling,
you wouldn't. They're so
awf'ly
charming.”

“No, 'course I wouldn't, but not because of that. Only because the bloke that owns them probably has nothing else.”

Finally we reached San Francisco Javier and its one small hotel-bar, the “Fonda Alonzo.” Apart from the
fonda
the hamlet consisted of only about twenty small cottages, whitewashed in the Balearic style.

We strolled into the bar, Sissie shyly, I thirstily, and found Alonzo sitting behind the bar, staring into space. Had he been literate he would have been reading. As it was, he was remembering, which is probably almost as rewarding as reading, and much cheaper.

Alonzo stood up. He was a burly man of about forty-five, with the jet-black hair and eyes and the clear but ruddy complexion which are common on the islands. He wore an open black waistcoat over an off-white collarless shirt, and black, baggy pants. On his feet were straw sandals. Most of the islanders wore clothes made by local women; Alonzo's, no doubt, were made by his diminutive wife, who was one of the hardest-working, harassed individuals I have ever seen anywhere.

Alonzo was a semi-millionaire—in
dollars
—as he had sold off various lots of inherited land to foreign real-estate investors. All the land was earth-thin and rocky, fit only for olive trees and goats. There was no water on the island—only salt- and rainwater—but the beauty of the vistas had fooled the foreigners and they had eagerly plonked down their money in pounds, francs, kronor, guilders, dollars, and lire. Alonzo had it all stashed away in clay pots in the bar cellar. He couldn't speak a word of anything but the obscure and excruciating-sounding Formenteran dialect of Catalan, which very few foreigners could ever hope to learn, so no blame could be laid to Alonzo for the foolish waste of money. The smart city-boys and girls had come to this remote, beautiful island, so near to an up-and-coming tourist Mecca, and they had, they thought, taken this ignorant, stupid-looking clodhopper and paid a song for prime beachfront property. They'd been doing it for years. The land lots were still there, as arid and rocky as ever. The goats still grazed on them and the sun still beat down on them and the blue Mediterranean lapped their golden-rock shores—and Alonzo was still there in his fonda. All the money was in the cellar, and the smart people were all back in their stuffy offices in smoky cities. So who took who? I am quite sure that, at that time at least, Alonzo had no idea of what the money represented. You might just as well have swapped him a computer for his wooden plow and sandals. It would have been all the same to Alonzo. He would have stored the computer in the cellar, too.

But Alonzo had been a great friend of Deaf Henry Gillon and Closet the Aussie, the skipper and crew of the good ship
Fanny Adams,
whose rusting iron keel was now the home of a thousand angelfish on the bottom of Formentera harbor. Anyone who was a friend of that pair was my friend, too. (See
Saga of a Wayward Sailor.
)

At first Alonzo, astonished at Sissie's appearance, stared at her for a moment; then he turned to me, flashing his white teeth. His eyebrows shot up.
“Hola, Señor Treestan! Cómo estás?”

Alonzo's tiny, gypsy-dark wife, barefoot, dressed all in black, with a shawl thrown over her head, ran swiftly through the bar, carrying a basket of laundry about twice her size. Alonzo, while seemingly faithful to his wife, had a sharp eye for any foreign female between the ages of fourteen and ninety. He seemed to melt before their holy presences. Before other men and the island women he was big, healthy, strapping and strong—a man to be reckoned with. Before foreign females he was a helpless mass.

“Alonzo! How's business?”

“Oh, very good. I still have two guests in the hotel . . .” Alonzo's eyes turned toward the ceiling. “They're coming down. Of course the
señora
has been here for some time. She is a book writer. But now we have a man . . . I think he's a German or something, and . . .” Alonzo stuck out his already-bulging chest, “and he's an artist, a
painter!”

Alonzo grabbed my shoulder and gently led me toward the one rough wooden table and bench on the bare concrete floor of the bar. Then he turned to Sissie, gleamed his white teeth at her, and with a half-bow swept his hand down in front of him toward a chair—the only one—which he was already dusting with his other hand.

Just as Sissie, almost fainting at Alonzo's genuine good manners, sat down, through the low front door of the bar walked two figures. The first, when it was in the shade, turned out to be a woman. At a wild guess I would say she was about sixty. She was slender, frail, and very short—no more than five feet. Her hair was
blue
and cut in a pageboy style, as was the rage in the twenties. She had a tiny, bird-like face, which was plastered with powder over her deep suntan. It made her look as if she'd dipped her face in a flour bag. On her cheeks were two daubs of thick pink rouge, and her thin lips were painted with scarlet lipstick in a Cupid's bow. She wore a shiny satin dress, light blue, the waist of which was about where her hips would have been if she'd had any, but with a skirt shorter than the then-popular mini-skirts. Below this her legs were clad in beige stockings, and she was shod in silver shoes, the heels of which were at least three inches high. Around her neck, which had as many folds as my mainsail, she was decorated with about a dozen strings of pearls. She looked like the oldest teenager alive.