The wind rises, p.10
The Wind Rises, page 10
“I’d love to hear your opinion, Palardi! Please tell me more about Africa and its trade.”
The surgeon straightens his hat. He’s acting modest, not having picked up on the captain’s ironic tone. Nearby, Morel, the trainee naval officer, is trying to catch his attention.
“Well, I’m hardly an expert,” Palardi continues, “but I’m happy to be of assistance.”
“Assistance? Why, you’re more than just assistance, Palardi, you’re my saviour! So what you’re saying is I’m more than fifty leagues off target? Do you hear that? Morel! Picard! Absalom! A marksman three sheets to the wind would have better aim than I do! Goodness gracious. Over a hundred miles too far south! I’m about as much use as a bit of flotsam.”
Gardel puts his hand to his chest like a bad actor and turns towards his audience.
“What an amateur! Gentlemen, behold the pathetic excuse for a captain you are stuck with.”
Palardi is beginning to tense up at the sight of this spectacle. The captain goes over to him.
“Tell me, good doctor . . .”
“Yes . . .”
“Let’s imagine for a moment . . .”
“Yes?”
“Imagine I were to open up your stomach, very gently, to operate on your spleen or liver with the sail maker’s scissors, right now, in front of everyone, then stitched you back up again with a fishing line.”
Palardi swallows anxiously.
“Pardon me, Captain?”
“How would you feel about that?” asks Gardel.
“I . . . that’s really more a job for . . .”
“For a surgeon?”
“Yes . . .”
“You’re right. It is.”
The captain acts as though he’s about to go. Then he stops and turns back.
“So tell me, Palardi.”
“Yes?”
“Are you the captain of this ship?”
He grabs the surgeon by the ear and lifts him up without raising his voice in the slightest.
“Are you?”
“No . . .”
“So why are you trying to explain my job to me? What is it that makes you think I don’t know where I’m going?”
Palardi’s feet are no longer touching the ground. He’s groaning quietly in pain.
“I never, for one second, had the intention to stop in Saint Louis,” says the captain. “I happen to know there’s nothing to be found in that part of the coast right now. As for Gorée, three ships will soon be arriving there from La Rochelle. Then there’ll be others coming from Nantes and Honfleur and they’ll have to fight it out over two scrawny captives and a bit of yellowing ivory.”
The captain finally lets go of the surgeon’s ear. He turns around to speak to his crew.
“If anyone else has any advice about the route, raise your hand!”
He looks around at them, one by one.
“You may think it’s almost over, but this is only the beginning. It’ll be ten more days before we arrive in Elmina. Now listen carefully. We won’t be setting our feet on solid ground a day before then. That is where we’ll begin trading. We’ll buy every last captive we find. Then we’ll continue all the way down the coast. We’ll go as far as the King of Congo’s house, if need be, and then we’ll keep going! Until there’s not even enough room for a newborn baby in the hull of this ship, until not another breath of air can fit beneath this deck. Do I make myself clear?”
The sailors up in the shrouds are clinging to the masts, trying to keep themselves from fainting. The crew appears to have got the message.
“This ship must be ready in ten days. Up until now, some of you have been shirking. But in the days to come, I’ll drag you out of your little hidey-holes one by one. You’re going to work until you drop at my feet. I’d rather have you collapsing now than when we have five hundred captives on board. You’ve just spent two months in heaven. Now prepare yourselves for hell!”
Abel Lebon steadies himself against the mainmast, trembling. He’s almost certain Gardel is talking about him.
“Where’s Tavel the cooper?” shouts the captain.
“He’s ill,” says the surgeon timidly, rubbing his ear.
“Ill?”
“He’s resting a little in the rowboat,” Palardi explains, pointing to the boat suspended above the deck.
“You’re a doctor, Palardi. If Tavel’s not on his feet by tomorrow, I’ll drop you both off in the Bissagos Islands for a nice long rest on a lovely beach full of ten-foot-long snakes. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Captain,” gasps Palardi.
“What about Dubois? Where’s he got to?”
“Here,” says the carpenter, sticking his head out.
“Where’s this barricade?”
“We’ll need more wood to finish it off, as I told you. But three quarters of it is ready to be mounted.”
“How many men do you need?”
“Eight.”
“How much time?”
“Five days to put it all together.”
“You’ll go looking for wood on the Gold Coast when we get to Elmina or Cape Coast. For now, you can make do with what you have. I’ll give you four men and three days.”
“Five. I asked for five days. And eight men.”
“Since you’re complaining, you’ll only get two.”
“Why?”
“Because I can do whatever I please. And if you don’t get it done in time, you’ll be joining Monsieur Palardi and Monsieur Tavel on their island among the mosquitoes and the mamba snakes.”
Gardel turns on his heels and shouts to the crew:
“Helm to port! Ease sheets to broad reach! Back to work, all of you. And the next to complain will get the whip.”
As he leaves the deck, the whole crew leaps into action. A few men go over to the carpenter.
“Go down and wait for me in the steerage,” says Dubois calmly. “There’s one last thing I have to see to.”
His eyes follow the surgeon, who walks along the gangway to the rowboat and steps in. Dubois goes over to him.
There, beneath a roof of tarred linen, lies Tavel the cooper, his head on a sack of hay.
Dubois watches as Palardi bends down and places his hand on the sick man’s shoulder.
“How do you feel, Tavel?” the doctor asks. It’s a stupid question. “You’re going to have to start thinking about getting better now.”
Tavel shakes his head.
“How are you treating him?” asks Dubois, pulling Palardi to one side.
“Bloodletting each morning. It should eventually do the trick.”
“Bloodletting?”
“Yes. I’m draining five ounces a day from the arm.”
“Where did you learn that?”
“Rochefort. At the school of surgery.”
“You must have known Eugenie?”
“Who?”
“A petite, red-headed woman, about five foot tall. She lived in a little town called Doëlan off the coast of Brittany. I lived on her farm for a whole year.”
“Excuse me?”
“She died a long time ago, poor thing. She was eighty years old, blue eyes. You don’t remember her?”
“I . . . Doëlan? I don’t know Doëlan.”
“Ah, Eugenie . . . sweet but tough like an old beech tree. Does the name really not ring any bells?”
“I don’t think so . . . was she also a doctor?”
“No, no. But I watched her butcher a fair few pigs.”
“So?”
“So, judging by your techniques, I’d have assumed you went to the same school.”
Palardi goes to grab Dubois by the throat, but the carpenter swats him away with the back of his hand, knocking Palardi backwards into the little rowboat next to Tavel.
“I’m trying to save your life, Palardi. Don’t do anything else to this man. Give him the cooking water from the rice to drink. It’s the only way of treating dysentery. You can ask Cook to give you some. Open the cover at night to let some fresh air in and wait. He needs time to heal. Please, give him time.”
“I don’t have time,” the doctor moans. “Didn’t you hear the captain?”
“Why do you think Gardel wants the cooper to get better?”
Palardi doesn’t have to think for long.
“So he can build his barrels.”
“Precisely. It has nothing to do with his health. So leave this man be. I’ll deal with the captain.”
Dubois leans over to the sick man and gives him a reassuring smile.
“Sleep, Tavel,” he whispers. “Everything is going to be fine. You’re going to get better.”
Standing next to them, the surgeon tries to find something to say, but the carpenter is already gone. Palardi is left alone with the sound of the cooper’s groans. He, too, feels like crying. He’s never been able to heal a single person. He joined the merchant navy because he couldn’t take any more on the warships, where, as the battles raged, he treated patients with a saw, a butcher’s apron tied around his waist.
Dubois has gone below deck to join his men.
“The barricade splits the deck in two,” one sailor is explaining to Abel Lebon. “It separates the stern of the ship from the bow. If the captives revolt, the barrier is there to save us all.”
“Those of us who are on the right side,” says Dubois, joining them.
Just then, Absalom, the boatswain, pops up just behind Dubois. He’s looking for Joseph Mars.
“Me?”
“The captain wants to speak to you. Hurry.”
Joseph does as he’s told. Dubois watches him leave.
“Guess what we’re going to do now?” he asks the remaining men.
“The barricade.”
“No,” says the carpenter.
He smiles at the expressions of surprise on the sailors’ faces.
“We’re going to make barrels.”
Having just about recovered after the captain’s terrifying speech, Abel Lebon’s heart starts racing again. He’s been given two days to create the barricade, but the carpenter is going to spend half of that time trying to save the cooper. There’s a flicker of understanding in Abel Lebon’s eyes. He’s been suffering for every second of the two months they’ve spent on board.
As he straps an iron hoop to the first barrel, Abel goes over Gardel’s awful speech again in his head. He tries to imagine what the future holds. If these last two months really have been heaven, what could hell possibly look like?
17
Good Fortune
After stopping to have a quick word with Cook, Joseph dashes towards the captain’s quarters. He knocks twice on the door, determined to stay focused.
It’s the first time he’s been back here since that night in August when he took the diamonds and the watch. From the sound the door makes as it opens, he realises that another lock has been added. The captain has grown more wary, which is why Joseph hasn’t been able to come back since.
“Sit,” says Gardel.
Joseph enters. He recognises the sound of the clock right away. He sits down. In front of him is a mahogany table with two legs sawn down to keep the tabletop horizontal in spite of the sloping floorboards at the ship’s stern. Gold-framed pictures line the walls. The curtains have been drawn back over their respective windows, just like at the theatre. Here, everything is refined. It’s hard to believe that just a few steps away, the rest of the ship is beginning to look more and more like a prison.
High up, draped in red, the captain’s bed looks like it belongs in an oriental palace. On the other side of the room, in the corner between the farthest two windows, there’s a little lavatory. This is the captain’s personal toilet—the greatest privilege accorded to anyone on board. The rest of the crew share an open-air platform on the beakhead at the front of the ship, where the wind and waves can strike at the most inopportune moments.
“Up on deck just before,” says Gardel, “I mentioned the weak among us who’ve been in hiding. Do you remember?”
“Yes . . . ”
The captain is pacing around the room. In his hand he holds one of his favourite toys: a folding razor blade that he flicks open and closed.
“When I said that, I wasn’t even thinking about you.”
“Thanks.”
Joseph feels the captain almost brush past his back.
“There’s no point lying to you. There are a few sailors on board I may leave behind in a cove on a Caribbean island, or perhaps exchange with another ship. But you’re not one of them.”
Behind him, Joseph hears the click of the razor being folded into its ivory handle.
“No . . . I don’t consider you one of them, Joseph Mars.”
He stops.
“I consider you to be more like the cockroaches and rats. When it comes to them, I spare myself the bother of taking the jolly boat you see hanging before this window and lowering it into the sea. With rats, the quickest way to dispose of them is to take them by the tail, when they’re sleeping at the bottom of the hold at night, and slice them in two.”
There’s another click as the captain flicks his razor blade open again, followed by a long silence.
“You see, they’re parasites. Mouths that need feeding but serve no purpose. Now listen to me, boy. You’re not doing anything I’ve asked you to. Not a shred of progress in a whole month. Do you know exactly what you owe me?”
“No.”
“Your life. No more, no less.”
Joseph doesn’t say a word. The captain has stopped right behind him.
“I’ve been thinking a lot, my boy,” he says. “I’m trying to understand what you’re doing. Either you’re being honest, and you haven’t found a thing on the parchment the old pirate left, or you don’t want to tell me what you know. In either case, your fate remains the same.”
The clock is fixed to the partition right in front of Joseph. He doesn’t take his eyes off it. Above the clock face, there’s a carving of a little black girl with a cotton flower in her hair.
Joseph looks at her. He feels like he’s counting on her. He’s waiting for something.
“Would you indulge my curiosity,” the captain continues, “and tell me which of these two explanations is correct? Be honest. It won’t change a thing.”
“The second.”
“The second?”
“The second explanation is correct, yes. I don’t know what you’ll do with me the day I solve the riddle. So maybe I’m not telling you everything I know. It’s only natural.”
Gardel sneers.
“Natural?”
He circles the table, takes out a chair and sits down opposite Joseph. He waits for a moment, then suddenly drives the blade into the table just in front of Joseph.
“You think you can bargain with me?
“Yes.”
“How can I be sure you know more than you’re telling me?”
“What about me? How do I know you won’t abandon me the day I tell you where Luc de Lerna’s treasure is buried?”
Gardel laughs again, without making a sound. Then he stops. He thinks for a moment.
“What do you want?” he asks. “Some kind of guarantee?”
“Yes.”
“Listen to me, boy. Do you see the hands on that clock? In two minutes, it will strike noon. If, before the final chime, you give me proof of your progress, I swear to you you’ll be with me when I dig up the treasure.”
“Swear on what?”
“I give you my word.”
This time, it’s Joseph who smiles.
“What?” asks Gardel.
“I don’t believe a word you say.”
The captain grits his teeth.
“So? What do you suggest?” he asks.
“Swear on the stormy skies and the seven seas,” says Joseph.
“What?”
“Swear on the stormy skies and the seven seas.”
Gardel’s face changes. He hesitates. He’s probably the only sailor in the world who laughs in the face of superstition. Yet the idea of making this oath frightens him. He doesn’t believe in anything. He’d happily betray all the gods in the sky. But nobody jokes about storms at sea.
“Hurry up,” says Joseph. “The clock’s about to strike noon.”
“I swear,” growls Gardel.
“On what?”
“On the stormy skies . . .”
“And the seven seas.”
“On the stormy skies and the seven seas,” the captain says finally, his face as white as the large merchant’s flag flying on the other side of the window.
No sooner have they sealed the deal than the clock begins to strike. Above the clock face, the little girl with the cotton flower has started to strike the bell with a thin golden beater. One, two . . .
How could Joseph have taken such a risk? Seven, eight . . .
The clock strikes nine. The colour begins to come back to Gardel’s cheeks as he looks over at Joseph. In three seconds, their pact will be worth nothing.
But just as the little girl with the cotton flower strikes the bell a twelfth time, there’s a loud knock at the door.
The captain extracts the blade from the mahogany table.
“What is it?”
He gets up and goes to the door.
“You asked for me?” says the voice behind the door. Joseph can tell it’s Cook even from the table where he’s sitting.
“You can come in,” says Joseph, as if these were his quarters.
Gardel steps aside to let Cook pass.
“I was told you were expecting me at noon.”
“Sit down,” says Joseph, indicating the seat opposite him.
Gardel watches the scene unfold, incapable of reacting. It’s as though he’s the servant of this child, who is making himself at home in his quarters.
