Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [76]
Hugh looked at the Oedipus Tyrannus in her new berth, but swinging again rebelliously close, as to the tether of his mind, the old steamer appearing now on one quarter, now on another, one moment near the breakwater, the next running out to sea. She was, unlike the Philoctetes, everything in his eyes a ship should be. First she was not in rig a football boat, a mass of low goalposts and trankums. Her masts and derricks were of the lofty coffee-pot variety. These former were black, of iron. Her funnel too was tall, and needed paint. She was foul and rusty, red lead showed along her side. She had a marked list to port, and, who knows, one to starboard as well. The condition of her bridge suggested recent contact--could it be possible?--with a typhoon. If not, she possessed the air of one who would soon attract them. She was battered, ancient, and, happy thought, perhaps even about to sink. And yet there was something youthful and beautiful about her, like an illusion that will never die, but always remains hull-down on the horizon. It was said she was capable of seven knots. And she was going to New York! On the other hand should he sign on her, what became of England? He was not so absurdly sanguine about his songs as to imagine his fame so bright there after two years... Besides, it would mean a terrible readjustment, starting all over again. Still, there could not be the same stigma attaching to him on board. His name would scarcely have reached Colón. Ah, his brother Geoff, too, knew these seas, these pastures of experience, what would he have done?
But he couldn't do it. Galled as he was lying a month at Yokohama without shore leave it was still asking too much. It was as if at school, just as the end of term beautifully came in sight, he had been told there would be no summer holidays, he must go on working as usual through August and September. Save that no one was telling him anything. Some inner self, merely, was urging him to volunteer so that another sea-weary man, homesick longer than he, might take his place. Hugh signed on board the Oedipus Tyrannus.
When he returned to the Philoctetes a month later in Singapore he was a different man. He had dysentery. The Oedipus Tyrannus had not disappointed him. Her food was poor. No refrigeration, simply an icebox. And a chief steward (the dirty wog) who sat all day in his cabin smoking cigarettes. The fo'c'sle was forward too. He left her against his will however, due to an agential confusion, and with nothing in his mind of Lord Jim, about to pick up pilgrims going to Mecca. New York had been shelved, his shipmates, if not all the pilgrims would probably reach home after all. Alone with his pain off duty Hugh felt a sorry fellow. Yet every now and then he rose on his elbow: my God what a life! No conditions could be too good for the men tough enough to endure it. Not even the ancient Egyptians knew what slavery was. Though what did he know about it?
Not much. The bunkers, loaded at Miki--a black coaling port calculated to fulfil any landsman's conception of a sailor's dreams, since every house in it was a brothel, every woman a prostitute, including even an old hag who did tattoos--were soon full: the coal was near the stokehold floor. He had seen, only the bright side of a trimmer's job, if it could be said to have one. But was it much better on deck? Not really. No pity there either. To the sailor life at sea was no senseless publicity stunt.
It was dead serious. Hugh was horribly ashamed of ever having so exploited it. Years of crashing dullness, of exposure to every kind of obscure peril and disease, your destiny at the mercy of a company interested in your health only because it might have to pay your insurance, your home-life reduced to a hip-bath with your wife on the kitchen mat every eighteen months, that was the sea. That, and a secret longing to be buried in it. And an enormous unquenchable pride. Hugh now thought he realized dimly what the lamp-trimmer had tried to explain, why he had been alternately abused and toadied to on the Philoctetes.
It was largely because he had foolishly advertised himself as the representative of a heartless system both distrusted and feared.