The Log From the Sea of Cortez (Penguin Classics) (17 page)

Read The Log From the Sea of Cortez (Penguin Classics) Online

Authors: John Steinbeck

BOOK: The Log From the Sea of Cortez (Penguin Classics)
2.67Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
We find we like this cash-and-carry bribery as contrasted with our own system of credits. With us, no bargain is struck, no price named, nothing is clear. We go to a friend who knows a judge. The friend goes to the judge. The judge knows a senator who has the ear of the awarder of contracts. And eventually we sell five carloads of lumber. But the process has only begun. Every member of the chain is tied to every other. Ten years later the son of the awarder of contracts must be appointed to Annapolis. The senator must have traffic tickets fixed for many years to come. The judge has a political lien on your friend, and your friend taxes you indefinitely with friends who need jobs. It would be simpler and cheaper to go to the awarder of contracts, give him one-quarter of the price of the lumber, and get it over with. But that is dishonest, that is a bribe. Everyone in the credit chain eventually hates and fears everyone else. But the bribe-bargain, having no enforcing mechanism, promotes mutual respect and a genuine liking. If the accepter of a bribe cheats you, you will not go to him again and he will soon have to leave the public service. But if he fulfills his contract, you have a new friend whom you can trust.
 
We do not know whether Mexicans are happier than we; it is probable that they are exactly as happy. However, we do know that the channels of their happiness or unhappiness are different from ours, just as their time sense is different. We can invade neither, but it is some gain simply to know that it is so.
 
As the men on our deck continued with what we thought was wine and they probably considered some expensive foreign beverage (it must have tasted bad enough to be very foreign and very expensive), they uncovered a talent for speech we have often noticed in these people. They are natural orators, filling their sentences with graceful forms, with similes and elegant parallels. Our oldest man delivered for us a beautiful political speech. He was an ardent admirer of General Almazán, who was then a candidate for the Mexican presidency. Our Indian likened the General militarily to the god of war, but whether Mars, or Huitzilopochtli, he did not say. In physical beauty the General stemmed from Apollo, not he of the Belvedere, but an earlier, sturdier Apollo. In kindness and forethought and wisdom Almazán was rather above the lesser deities. Our man even touched on the General’s abilities in bed, although how he knew he did not say. We gathered, though, that the General was known and well thought of in this respect by his total feminine constituency. “He is a strong man,” said our orator, holding himself firmly upright by the port stay. One of us interposed, “When he is elected there will be more fish in the sea for the poor people of Mexico.” And the orator nodded wisely. “That is so my friend,” he said. It was later that we learned that General Camacho, the other candidate, had many of the same beautiful qualities as General Almazán. And since he won, perhaps he had them more highly developed. For political virtues always triumph, and when two such colossi as these oppose each other, one can judge their relative excellences only by counting the vote.
 
We had known that sooner or later we must develop an explanation for what we were doing which would be short and convincing. It couldn’t be the truth because that wouldn’t be convincing at all. How can you say to a people who are preoccupied with getting enough food and enough children that you have come to pick up useless little animals so that perhaps your world picture will be enlarged? That didn’t even convince us. But there had to be a story, for everyone asked us. One of us had once taken a long walking trip through the southern United States. At first he had tried to explain that he did it because he liked to walk and because he saw and felt the country better that way. When he gave this explanation there was unbelief and dislike for him. It sounded like a lie. Finally a man said to him, “You can’t fool me, you’re doing it on a bet.” And after that, he used this explanation, and everyone liked and understood him from then on. So with these men we developed our story and stuck to it thereafter. We were collecting curios, we said. These beautiful little animals and shells, while they abounded so greatly here as to be valueless, had, because of their scarcity in the United States, a certain value. They would not make us rich but it was at least profitable to take them. And besides, we liked taking them. Once we had developed this story we never had any more trouble. They all understood us then, and brought us what they thought were rare articles for the collection. They considered that we might get very rich. Thank heaven they do not know that when at last we came back to San Diego the customs fixed a value on our thousands of pickled animals of five dollars. We hope these Indians never find it out; we would go down steeply in their estimations.
 
Our men went away finally a trifle intoxicated, but not forgetting to take an armload of empty tomato cans. They value tin cans very highly.
 
It would not have done to sail for La Paz harbor that night, for the pilot has short hours and any boat calling for him out of his regular hours must pay double. But we wanted very much to get to La Paz; we were out of beer and already the water in our tanks was stale-tasting. It had seemed to us that it was stale when we put it in and time did not improve it. It isn’t likely that we would have died of thirst. The second or third day would undoubtedly have seen us drinking the unpleasant stuff. But there were other reasons why we longed for La Paz. Cape San Lucas had not really been a town, and our crew had convinced itself that it had been a very long time out of touch with civilization. In civilization we think they included some items which, if anything, are attenuated in highly civilized groups. In addition, there is the genuine fascination of the city of La Paz. Everyone in the area knows the greatness of La Paz. You can get anything in the world there, they say. It is a huge place—not of course so monstrous as Guaymas or Mazatlán, but beautiful out of all comparison. The Indians paddle hundreds of miles to be at La Paz on a feast day. It is a proud thing to have been born in La Paz, and a cloud of delight hangs over the distant city from the time when it was the great pearl center of the world. The robes of the Spanish kings and the stoles of bishops in Rome were stiff with the pearls from La Paz. There’s a magic-carpet sound to the name, anyway. And it is an old city, as cities in the West are old, and very venerable in the eyes of Indians of the Gulf. Guaymas is busier, they say, and Mazatlán gayer, perhaps, but La Paz is
antigua.
 
The Gulf and Gulf ports have always been unfriendly to colonization. Again and again attempts were made before a settlement would stick. Humans are not much wanted on the Peninsula. But at La Paz the pearl oysters drew men from all over the world. And, as in all concentrations of natural wealth, the terrors of greed were let loose on the city again and again. An event which happened at La Paz in recent years is typical of such places. An Indian boy by accident found a pearl of great size, an unbelievable pearl. He knew its value was so great that he need never work again. In his one pearl he had the ability to be drunk as long as he wished, to marry any one of a number of girls, and to make many more a little happy too. In his great pearl lay salvation, for he could in advance purchase masses sufficient to pop him out of Purgatory like a squeezed watermelon seed. In addition he could shift a number of dead relatives a little nearer to Paradise. He went to La Paz with his pearl in his hand and his future clear into eternity in his heart. He took his pearl to a broker and was offered so little that he grew angry, for he knew he was cheated. Then he carried his pearl to another broker and was offered the same amount. After a few more visits he came to know that the brokers were only the many hands of one head and that he could not sell his pearl for more. He took it to the beach and hid it under a stone, and that night he was clubbed into unconsciousness and his clothing was searched. The next night he slept at the house of a friend and his friend and he were injured and bound and the whole house searched. Then he went inland to lose his pursuers and he was waylaid and tortured. But he was very angry now and he knew what he must do. Hurt as he was he crept back to La Paz in the night and he skulked like a hunted fox to the beach and took out his pearl from under the stone. Then he cursed it and threw it as far as he could into the channel. He was a free man again with his soul in danger and his food and shelter insecure. And he laughed a great deal about it.
 
This seems to be a true story, but it is so much like a parable that it almost can’t be. This Indian boy is too heroic, too wise. He knows too much and acts on his knowledge. In every way, he goes contrary to human direction. The story is probably true, but we don’t believe it; it is far too reasonable to be true.
 
La Paz, the great city, was only a little way from us now, we could almost see its towers and smell its perfume. And it was right that it should be so hidden here out of the world, inaccessible except to the galleons of a small boy’s imagination.
 
While we were anchored at Espíritu Santo Island a black yacht went by swiftly, and on her awninged after-deck ladies and gentlemen in white clothing sat comfortably. We saw they had tall cool drinks beside them and we hated them a little, for we were out of beer. And Tiny said fiercely, “Nobody but a pansy’d sail on a thing like that.” And then more gently, “But I’ve never been sure I ain’t queer.” The yacht went down over the horizon, and up over the horizon climbed an old horror of a cargo ship, dirty and staggering. And she stumbled on toward the channel of La Paz; her pumps must have been going wide open. Later, at La Paz, we saw her very low in the water in the channel. We said to a man on the beach, “She is sinking.” And he replied calmly, “She always sinks.”
 
On the
Western Flyer,
vanity had set in. Clothing was washed unmercifully. The white tops of caps were laundered, and jeans washed and patted smooth while wet and hung from the stays to dry. Shoes were even polished and the shaving and bathing were deafening. The sweet smell of unguents and hair oils, of deodorants and lotions, filled the air. Hair was cut and combed; the mirror over the washstand behind the deckhouse was in constant use. We regarded ourselves in the mirror with the long contemplative coy looks of chorus girls about to go on stage. What we found was not good, but it was the best we had. Heaven knows what we expected to find in La Paz, but we wanted to be beautiful for it.
 
And in the morning, when we got under way, we washed the fish blood off the decks and put away the equipment. We coiled the lines in lovely spirals and washed all the dishes. It seemed to us we made a rather gallant show, and we hoped that no beautiful yacht was anchored in La Paz. If there were a yacht, we would be tough and seafaring, but if no such contrast was available some of us at least proposed to be not a little jaunty. Even the least naive of us expected Spanish ladies in high combs and mantillas to be promenading along the beach. It would be rather like the opening scene of a Hollywood production of
Life in Latin America,
with dancers in the foreground and cabaret tables upstage from which would rise a male chorus to sing “I met my love in La Paz—satin and Latin she was.”
 
We assembled on top of the deckhouse, the
Coast Pilot
open in front of us. Even Tony had succumbed; he wore a gaudy white seaman’s cap with a gold ornament on the front of it which seemed to be a combination of field artillery and submarine service, except that it had an arrow-pierced heart superimposed on it.
 
We have so often admired the literary style and quality of the Coast Pilot that it might be well here to quote from it. In the first place, the compilers of this book are cynical men. They know that they are writing for morons, that if by any effort their descriptions can be misinterpreted or misunderstood by the reader, that effort will be made. These writers have a contempt for almost everything. They would like an ocean and a coastline unchanging and unchangeable ; lights and buoys that do not rust and wash away; winds and storms that come at specified times; and, finally, reasonably intelligent men to read their instructions. They are gratified in none of these desires. They try to write calmly and objectively, but now and then a little bitterness creeps in, particularly when they deal with Mexican lights, buoys, and port facilities. The following quotation is from H. O. No. 84, “Sailing Directions for the West Coasts of Mexico and Central America, 1937, Corrections to January 1940,” page 125, under “La Paz Harbor.”
 
 
 
La Paz Harbor is that portion of La Paz Channel between the eastern end of El Mogote and the shore in the vicinity of La Paz. El Mogote is a low, sandy, bush-covered peninsula, about 6 miles long, east and west, and 1½ miles wide at its widest part, that forms the northern side of Ensenada de Anpe, a large lagoon. This lagoon lies in a low plain that is covered with a thick growth of trees, bushes, and cactus. The water is shoal over the greater part of the lagoon, but a channel in which there are depths of 2 to 4 fathoms leads from La Paz Harbor to its northwestern part.
 
La Paz Harbor
is ½ to ¾ mile wide, but it is nearly filled with shoals through which there is a winding channel with depths of 3 to 4 fathoms. A shoal with depths of only 1 to 8 feet over it extends northward from the eastern end of El Mogote to within 400 yards of Prieta Point and thus protects La Paz Harbor from the seas caused by northwesterly winds.
 
La Paz Channel,
leading between the shoal just mentioned and the mainland, and extending from Prieta Point to abreast the town of La Paz, has a length of about 3½ miles and a least charted depth of 3¼ fathoms, but this depth can not be depended upon. Vessels of 13-foot draft may pass through the channel at any stage of the tide. The channel is narrow, with steep banks on either side, the water in some places shoaling from 3 fathoms to 3 or 4 feet within a distance of 20 yards. The deep water of the channel and the projecting points of the shoals on either side can readily be distinguished from aloft. In 1934 the controlling depth in the channel was reported to be 16 feet.
 
A 9-foot channel, frequently used by coasters, leads across the shoal bank and into La Paz Channel at a position nearly 1 mile south-southeastward of Prieta Point. Caymancito Rock, on the eastern side of La Paz Channel, bearing 129°, leads through this side channel.
 
 
Beacons—Off
Prieta Point, at the entrance to the channel leading to La Paz, there are three beacons consisting of lengths of 3-inch pipe driven into the bottom and extending only a few feet above the surface of the water. They are difficult to make out at high tide in the daytime, and are not lighted at night [here the hatred creeps in subtly].
 
Light Beacons
—Three pairs of concrete range beacons, from each of which a light is shown, mark La Paz Channel. The outer range is situated on the shore near the entrance to the channel, about 1 mile southeastward of Prieta Point; the middle range is on a hillside about ¼ mile south-southeastward of Caymancito Rock; and the inner range is situated about ¾ mile northeastward of the municipal pier at La Paz, ...
 
 
Harbor Lights
—A light is shown from a wooden post 18 feet high and another from a post 20 feet high on the north and south ends, respectively, of the T-head of the municipal pier at La Paz....
 
Anchorage—
Vessels waiting for a pilot can anchor southward of Prieta Point in depths of 7 to 10 fathoms. Anchorage can also be taken northward of El Mogote, but it is exposed to wind and sea....
 
The best berth off the town is 200 to 300 yards westward of the pier in a depth of about 3½ fathoms, sand....
 
Pilotage
is compulsory for all foreign merchant vessels. Pilots come out in a small motor launch carrying a white flag on which is the letter P, and board incoming vessels in the vicinity of Prieta Point. Although pilots will take vessels in at night, it is not advisable to attempt to enter the harbor after dark.
 

Other books

Under a Thunder Moon by Batcher, Jack
Preta's Realm by J Thorn
Times of Trouble by Victoria Rollison
For the Time Being by Annie Dillard
Scarlet Masquerade by Abbott, Jett
Retribution by Jambrea Jo Jones