Tierra del Fuego (9 page)

At that moment, the horn of the
Gastelu
blew again, calling its men back from town, and the last two customers of the Hamburg quickly grabbed their caps and left.

Outside, they ran headlong into the black night, and the frozen tentacles emerging from the darkness fanned their faces and sobered them up.

“What about Martín?” one of them said, suddenly remembering the coffin they had abandoned on the sidewalk.

“We didn't bury him!” the other exclaimed, as if resuming the drunken litany.

“Let's keep quiet about it . . . We'll agree on a story with the others when we're in the boat.”

“Someone'll find him tomorrow and bury him!” the other replied, and they set off toward the quay and vanished like two shadows darker than the darkness around them.

But the following day there was no coffin to be found anywhere—snow had been falling all night, forming a mantle about three feet thick and turning everything white, and it continued snowing, slowly but so copiously that no one was going to go looking for coffins by the side of the road that day. Neither that day nor the days after that, with the snow hardening into a thick crust of ice . . .

It was as if the helmsman Martín had returned to sea after his death, like the souls of those who have died in shipwrecks and who follow the wake of what were their ships or the trail of those who tormented them in life or at the hour of their death.

Around mid-morning on that first day, Don Erico, the owner of the Bar Hamburg, started cleaning his establishment, and to his surprise, found an old gray-haired sailor sleeping it off behind some barrels in a room adjoining the toilets that served as a storeroom.

“Who are you?” he said, prodding him awake with his foot.

“Me?” Foster stammered. “I'm from the
Gastelu
. . .” He got to his feet, rubbing his eyes, still not quite realizing where he was.

“The ship that was calling her crew all night?”

“Yes . . . What about . . . my shipmates?” he stammered. “Did they go . . . Did they leave me?”

“Now that I come to think of it, they were asking after someone called Foster. Are you Foster?”

“Yes, I'm Foster!”

“I told them you'd gone with the others . . . looking for women!” Don Erico said, and laughed uproariously.

“And what about the ship?”

“She'll be long gone by now! No ship waits for a sailor!”

“Give me a gin!” Foster muttered, feeling in his pockets for money.

They went into the bar, where Don Erico poured him a large glass of gin.

“I used to be a sailor, too!” he said. “I sailed on the
Hapag
for years. Many's the time the ship left without me, and I had to get on another!”

Foster was stiff with cold after the night he had spent on the storeroom floor, but the gin stopped his teeth chattering, so he steadied himself with another glass before heading for the door.

“Don't go out,” Don Erico warned him. “It's snowing hard!”

“It doesn't matter, the ship may still be there!” he replied.

“They would have sounded the siren again!” the bar owner retorted.

Foster went down to the quay anyway and peered out at the mist-shrouded bay, but there were only a few old hulks moored there, along with some small craft that plied the coast and the odd wool-carrying ship that had been late getting out. The
Gastelu
was nowhere to be seen. By now she must be emerging from the eastern mouth of the straits, en route for Africa, and then Europe, the Mediterranean. From what he had heard, this was her last voyage. She was too old and had been forbidden to sail anymore. Some ship owner was sure to buy her, break her up, and sell the scrap at a profit. His hard heart cracked, as if a knife had gone through it . . . If he couldn't find the
Gastelu
again in any other port in the world, or if they broke her up for scrap, how would he ever find the money that Martín had hidden under a lantern near the top of the foremast? Who would be the lucky person to discover that treasure, for the sake of which he had committed the foulest act of his life—not giving his dying friend a glass of water with his medicine?

It was soon after crossing the Paso del Abismo, when they were in the channels, that Martín fell sick and called him over to reveal the place where he had hidden his savings from his years of sailing on the cargo ship
Gastelu
. He had planned to use that money to retire to his native village, in the province of Pontevedra, where his old mother still lived—the savings would be for her now. They already knew her well in the harbormaster's office at Vigo because of the money he sent her every month. Foster could leave the savings there for her, but if he had time, he'd prefer it if he could go to the village and give it to her personally. It was his final wish, his only wish!

From that moment on, a shadow began to rise slowly but inexorably inside Foster. “How can it be?” he said to himself. “Could I really be that evil?” He had looked after Martín in his sickness, but after the revelation, doubt crept in, slowing down his actions as much as the sick man's. He avoided him and even started to wish that he would die as soon as possible and stop annoying him . . . Why did he want him to die sooner rather than later? For the money at the top of the mast? Surely not! He couldn't be so wicked as to keep what another man had saved for himself and a poor old lady!

Anyway . . . He'd take care of the money . . . He would make sure the old woman got something . . . Because there was enough for the two of them . . .

He shuddered at the realization that he could be thinking this for the second time! Was he really so wicked? If he was, if this test had finally revealed his true nature, then why not take all the money and retire once and for all from these old ships, with their dubious routes and even more dubious cargoes, where all the dregs of the ports ended up? Money was everything in his life and here was his opportunity!

And that was what had made him hesitate so long, when Martín was on his deathbed, to hand him the glass of water with the medicine that he so desperately wanted! That glass of water could have helped Martín to hold out a little longer! He might even have recovered! Who knew God's will?

But he had delayed handing him the glass of water with the medicine, as if there were invisible shackles on his feet, stopping him from moving.

At last, Martín himself realized his friend's intentions, and it was then that the helmsman had turned that strange look on his villainous friend. It was the last look he had given him, at the moment of death, but its brilliance had flooded the cabin and impregnated the walls, and ever since had stopped him from sleeping.

With that brilliance, whether of fear or of hate, the look had passed into eternity, and had remained in the atmosphere like one more sigh of pain at human wickedness. A kind of rarefied air had surrounded him on all sides since the day of Martín's death. Whether he was turning the helm or scraping off the paint in bad weather, it was always there, filling him with a strange unease.

And in that cruel hour of abandonment, when he was faced with the evidence that the
Gastelu
had left for good, en route for other seas, with its little treasure hidden in the mast, the atmosphere become even more rarefied, despite the snow, which kept falling, endlessly, its white petals touching him, as if someone were reaching out from a distance, trying to see if it was him . . . and realizing that he had suddenly turned into someone else . . .

Foster wandered through the harbor like a ghost searching for another ghost . . . And, gradually, he realized with horror that the sailor's superstition was coming true in him and that he himself was carrying that other ghost inside him.

The loss, the abandonment, the lack of money increased his sense of remorse and marked his days. He was so crushed that he kept the secret, and never told anyone about the strange case of the coffin he was so feverishly searching for . . . Circumstances had conspired to leave him completely ignorant of the place where his shipmates had left it. And then he had gotten drunk . . . well, he'd gotten drunk because of everything else . . .

Where was Martín's body? Had he mysteriously been carried away by the snow and returned to sea, to stop Foster from living in peace? Had he already joined his soul to his, splitting it in two and tormenting it, while his body stayed on the ground or roamed the depths of the sea?

He inquired casually after the cemetery, but no one could tell him anything. Don Erico, the owner of the bar, knew nothing either. No one knew anything about what had happened.

His life became agonizing, unbearable. He wandered like a beggar from door to door, lighting fires in the morning in restaurants and bars in exchange for a piece of bread or a glass of
aguardiente
. Later, even these simple tasks were beyond him, and he missed the alcohol that had sustained him.

Early one morning, his body was found in a little cave in the cliffs to the west of the port. On his face was the grimace typical of those who have frozen to death, and his open eyes stared eastward, toward the mouth of the straits and the horizon where the masts of those old wandering ships—which usually sail past the port and only drop anchor if some damage needs repairing or a sick person needs to be landed—gradually disappear from sight.

Then what is known as “the little summer of San Juan” arrived, and the pale southern sun grew hotter for a few days, thawing the thick covering of snow that had formed with the previous storms. On a street on the outskirts of town, on the way to the cemetery, a strange coffin appeared one fine day, painted green, with a frozen corpse inside. The discovery roused the authorities. The police investigated, an autopsy was carried out, but no one was able to discover anything for certain.

But when Mike, the baker's half-mad son, saw the coffin being carried from the morgue to the cemetery and took off his hat to accompany it, he tried to say something. He held up five fingers, swayed like a sailor, and kept pointing at the coffin, but no one understood that with this mime he was trying to say:

“Five sailors and a green coffin.”

 

 

 

 

 

M
an's capable of anything if you don't keep an eye on him!”
The words were spoken by Dámaso Ramírez, skipper of the schooner
Huamblín
, as he turned the ship's wheel.

“It's not as bad as that,” Seaman Ruperto Alvarez replied, not having quite understood what the skipper was talking about. “Look what happened when the
Taitao
went down. One man saved the lot of us!”

“No,” the skipper corrected him, “I'm talking about Villegas . . .”

“When you said ‘man,' I thought you were talking about men in general . . .”

“No, I meant the cook. He's left us without meat again. When the divers find out, there'll be hell to pay . . .”

“Didn't he buy meat when we left Puerto Montt?”

“No, he says the butchers were all closed by the time we weighed anchor.”

“He just did it to annoy us. He must be in one of his moods again.”

“That's what I think. The man's evil inside. If we don't keep an eye on him, God knows what he's capable of.”

The
Huamblín
, a sixty-ton schooner, was sailing against the wind on its auxiliary engine, close to the Desertores. This group of six or seven islands at the very end of the Chiloé archipelago is the last inhabited place you encounter before you enter the desolate regions of the southern seas, and is located at the entrance to the Gulf of Corcovado, which always promises ships a rough ride as they pass through its tempestuous waters.

A day and a half had passed since the schooner had left Puerto Montt and headed for Puerto Edén, a deep-set natural harbor on the other side of the Angostura Inglesa, in the middle of the Magallanes channels, and, whether through negligence or deliberate malice on the part of the cook, they found themselves at these latitudes without a single piece of meat for the four crew members and the three divers they had with them for fishing mussels in Puerto Edén. It was mid-autumn, and the schooner would be spending the whole winter plying the channels, coves and fjords near that remote spot.

Her mission was to find the mussel boats scattered around the Puerto Edén area, put the mussels into sacks and transport them in her hold until they could be transferred to the coasters that put in at Puerto Edén on their way north.

“There's nothing we can do but sail straight to the Desertores,” Ramírez said, feeling the first big waves from the gulf. Then, changing the subject, “Tell me about the
Taito
!”

“It happened years ago, skipper. It was a four-master, very well equipped. Not a piece of junk like this
Huamblín
. We ran aground on the rocks on the island of Huapi, near San Pedro. One of the sailors managed to swim to the coast with a rope tied to his belt and secured it to something there. The captain stood on a bare rock shaped like a table, held the other end of the rope tight and saved all of us. He knew that when his turn came, there'd be nobody on the rock to hold the rope, but he didn't want anyone to replace him. He just stood there, holding it as tight as he could until the last of the men had gone across. I wasn't one of the first to go, I can tell you that, but in the end I had to grab the rope like the others and save myself. When we were all on shore, we saw the captain throw himself in the water, in the middle of the storm, still hanging on to the rope. But a wave washed him back onto the side of the rock, and he couldn't move. That was the last we saw of him.”

“The man was a captain, a real captain, not a kitchen rat like this Villegas, who leaves the crew without meat!”

“There are bad captains, too . . .”

“But not cowards . . .”

“I've seen a few captains run away in my time.”

“What was the name of the captain of the
Taitao
?”

“Antonio Oyarzo,” the seaman said in a loud voice, looking out to sea with a mixture of pride and scorn.

At that moment, a bigger wave than the others came from the gulf and the schooner's starboard bow lifted. The little compass in front of the ship's wheel swung about. The skipper fixed his eyes on the compass card and at that moment the magnetic needle pointed toward his chest, indicating north. Dámaso Ramírez took advantage of the speed of the wave and headed for a rocky point at the southernmost tip of the island.

“We'll have to go into the Talcan estuary and see if we can find some sheep,” he said. “At this time of year, we don't know how many days' sailing we still have ahead of us.”

The schooner sailed past the rocky point with its dirty-looking edges and into the mouth of the Talcan estuary, between large banks of gulfweed populated by groups of small seagulls, which screeched and flapped their wings, looking like strange white waves.

The schooner dropped anchor at the end of the estuary, which is some seven miles long and lined with muddy beaches and wooded hills.

They met two or three islanders who refused to sell them their sheep, saying they were very poor and the only animals they had left were those intended for breeding. But they pointed to the flatter area to the southeast, where the biggest landowner on the island lived. He had a larger flock, they said.

But even when he cast anchor on that side of the island, the skipper still could not get anyone to sell him a sheep.

“I don't need money,” the landowner said, adding scornfully, “What would I do with money on this island? I sure can't eat it. A sheep, on the other hand, can feed a whole family if need be!”

Hurling a torrent of curses at the selfishness of the islanders, the skipper gave the order to weigh anchor. As he left the Desertores, feeling disheartened, he could not help thinking that those islands had been given their name with good reason. The southern night had already fallen, made all the darker by a fine curtain of drizzle.

Again they passed between the banks of gulfweed and the seagulls screeched farewell to them from out of the darkness. When the schooner was some distance from the coast, Seaman Alvarez went up onto the bridge, where the skipper was again at the helm, stood with his body half in and half out of the door, and in a slightly evasive tone, as if reluctant to speak, said, “What are you planning to do, skipper? . . . I've been in worse situations than this, and I've always pulled through . . .”

“Hmm!” Ramírez said, in a kind of moan. “So what would
you
do, seeing how none of these people want to sell us a sheep?”

“Do you think the only way to get a sheep is to buy it? When we want fish, do we go to the market? That'd be a fine thing, wouldn't it?”

“It isn't the same.”

“No? . . . I'd sail on a little way, until our engine is out of earshot. Then, with this southerly wind, I'd come back using only the sails!”

“And then?”

“Then we'd try our best to find something. As we were coming around the point I saw a whole flock up on the slope . . . They must belong to that rich islander . . . he'd never miss a couple of sheep.”

“Thou shalt not kill . . . thou shalt not steal . . . remember the commandments . . .”

“We can remember them when our bellies are full. But right now, with what's ahead of us—the Corcovado, the Guaitecas, the Gulf of Penas—we need something in the pot!”

“Who would do it?”

“I would, skipper . . . Villegas can help me. It won't be the first time I've done something like that . . . In Patagonia, as long as you leave the skin on the fence, they don't consider you a thief . . . It's a traveler's right.”

“We're not in Patagonia now . . .”

“I know we're not,” said the seaman, smiling slyly beneath his black mustache. “It'd be pretty stupid to go ashore and skin a sheep here . . . You have to bring it with the skin and everything.”

For a few moments, Ramírez said nothing, thinking about the act of piracy the seaman was suggesting . . . It was true the islanders had it coming to them for refusing to sell them a sheep in an emergency . . . But it was one thing to throw a hook over the side of the boat to catch a swordfish, quite another to land in the middle of nowhere to hunt for a sheep . . . The sea has its laws, and they aren't the same as the ones on land.

But his reflections were suddenly interrupted by the appearance of the three divers, who had just heard about the lack of meat. They told him they couldn't go on like this, and asked him to turn around and go back to where he could find supplies of meat. Diving is a respectable trade, without which mussel fishing would be impossible. Ramírez replied by raising two fingers to his mouth and letting out a shrill whistle. The engine stopped, and the schooner continued on its way in silence.

“Tomorrow you'll have roast and stew!” he said, and he ordered the sailor and the engineer to hoist the sails.

Before long, there came the sound of the pulleys creaking, then the flapping of the jib and the foresail, and finally the mainsail and the spanker rose like two great wings in the darkness. The
Huamblín
turned with the southeasterly wind, and again set a course for the Desertores, in silence this time, and protected by the darkness and the increasingly thick curtain of drizzle.

She sailed along the outside of the island, without entering the estuary, and cast her spare anchor, also silently, using a simple cable rope, on the edge of a sandbank covered by high tide.

“I'm not a thief!” was the response of Villegas the cook, when the skipper sent for him and ordered him to go ashore with Alvarez.

“It's all your fault we have to do this!” Ramírez roared.

“We have shellfish and edible seaweed on board,” the cook argued. “Why don't we make do with them? What do you think this is, an ocean liner?”

“Tell me, Villegas,” the skipper said, in a calmer voice, but one pregnant with threat, “why are you like this?”

“What should I be like? Would you look at that, he asks me to steal, and because I'm not a thief he gets angry!”

“What's happening to you, why are so twisted inside? Why did you leave us without meat?”

“I already told you, I couldn't find any meat before we set sail.”

“You should have informed me!”

“You came back drunk, so there was no point.”

“Well, you're going to have to find me some meat right now.”

“I'm not going, I'm not going!” he said sullenly, stamping with his foot on the floor of the bridge.

The skipper stood looking at him, his patience ever thinner. The cook was a short, thin man with a pale, angular face, very small, watery eyes and a woolly blond mustache that made him look like a mouse that had wandered into a flour mill.

“What do you mean, you're not going?” Ramírez suddenly yelled, grabbing him by the neck and pulling him toward him.

The cook swayed like a puppet, blinking rapidly as the skipper looked him in the eyes. Dámaso Ramírez was about to slap him, but his hand was still on the ship's wheel, gripping it in his thick fingers as if trying to tear it apart.

“Get out of here!” he said. “I don't want to see you back on this ship without a sheep over your shoulder!”

“I'll go!” the cook said, breaking free. “But when we get back to Puerto Montt I'll report you to the authorities! I'm no thief!”

“Report me to your grandmother, but bring me back a sheep!”

Meanwhile, Seaman Alvarez had lowered the lighter from the deck to the sea, and was waiting for the argument to finish, with a furtive smile under his trimmed mustache. Villegas got in, sitting down in the stern as if he were in charge. Alvarez took hold of both oars and rowed vigorously to the coast, which was shrouded in darkness and drizzle.

 

“I had to run like a madman to grab the sheep.”

It was days later, and Seaman Alvarez was speaking in the little cabin.

“Whereas this bastard,” he went on, glancing at the cook, “found a ewe that had just given birth, and the lamb simply followed.”

The
Huamblín
was already at the end of the Chonos archipelago, better known, except on maps, as the Guaitecas. It was night, and she had dropped anchor in the sheltered harbor of Balladares.

It is impossible for any vessel to sail at night in that area—especially impossible for someone like Dámaso Ramírez. As a former whaling master, he was used to the open seas, and did not trust that dense tangle of islands and channels that make up the Guaitecas, where the channels are often obstructed by spits and islets covered with vegetation so luxuriant that the foliage hangs down into the water, and casts a shadow over it.

In the middle of these channels is the harbor of Balladares, its muddy beach offering an excellent anchorage, and the
Huamblín
took advantage of it. She was protected here from the strong winds, which can rise suddenly and be very strong in that region.

No sooner had they dropped anchor between the two leafy headlands of Copihue and Laurel than the men on the schooner set off in the lighter with a barrel, which they hoped to fill with water from a waterfall they could see at the end of a wooded ravine. As they brought the lighter into shore, the bottom almost smashed onto a mussel patch left exposed by low tide. The mussels were so abundant that all the men had to do was put their hands over the side and fill the lighter with them. There were sea urchins, too, swarming close to the surface, turning the crystalline waters green. The whole cove, lined with tall, leafy trees—
coigue
,
tepa
and laurel—their tops garlanded with small red bell flowers, was a natural, untouched breeding ground for mussels, sea urchins, oysters and spider crabs, which are found in abundance in the Guaitecas.

That night there was a kind of party on board the
Huamblín
, to celebrate these gifts from the sea. Dámaso Ramírez was in a good mood and opened the demijohn of apple brandy he had brought for the journey. The passengers and crew usually gathered in the small cabin after supper, especially when they were well moored, but that night the gathering was particularly animated.