As Mrs. Grub's head neared completion, she had whimpered to her husband and he had relayed it sadly to me over a drink —she had hoped I'd do a sort of Epstein head. I was not hurt by this affront—no, I gathered my frayed artistic dignity about me as best I could and said that Epstein was Epstein and Slo-bodkin . . . well . . . Slobodkin, was Slobodkin, and I might have added that if they had wanted an Epstein they'd have had to pay a thousand pounds, while for the skimpy twenty they were paying me they would only get a Slobodkin—a bargain at any price and a pretty good investment, if I do say so.
But I said all that to myself, for I liked Mr. Grub and did not want to hurt him. Instead, I switched the talk back to my gnawing ambition to get a ship. Whereupon Mr. Grub revealed that he was a lot cannier than I'd given him credit for. He asked when I'd finish the Madame's head. I replied that I was waiting for the plaster cast to dry and I expected to work it for a few days ... in about a week I'd patine the plaster, and it would be done.
Yes, in those days I did a beautiful patined portrait head of your favorite wife for a hundred bucks. Of course, there's been a market crash, depression, oppression, and a war since then, and I'm a good bit older and I can finagle a lot better price than that now—so. Art Lovers, don't write for similar terms.
The head would be done in a week, repeated Mr. Grub. Then he turned the trick I hadn't expected, and I felt he'd called my bluff.
He knew a man who owed him a favor. This man could get me a ship. I could only gulp weakly—yeah?
Yeah, he said, this man had helped organize the Havana Shipping Board, and he knew every Port Captain in New York and was especially friendly with the United Banana Line, the Limited Lime Line, Universal Tropical, and many other steamship outfits that supply our pushcarts with squashy tropical fruit.
Mr. Grub had waited until I finished the portrait head to spring that, and I regretted my ill-considered yaps in the past month about shipping out—but I couldn't retract.
The following week he took me up to the office of the man who organized the Havana Shipping Board. He was in silk now, a silk jobber, a tall cadaverous man who really did seem to know Port Captains. With the assurance of one who knows he's welcome, he phoned a number of shipping lines, talked to a few Port Captains, using their first names, and after a few tries he talked to Captain Flint, Port Captain of the Universal Tropical Line and, damn it. Captain Flint might have a berth for me.
So-o-o, after promising to do a small portrait statue figurine of Mr. Shipping-Board-Organizer's beautiful twelve-year-old daughter when I came back from the sea (if ever), I left his office and took my first reluctant steps on that six-thousand, five-hundred-mile trip to the Argentine.
I found the Universal Tropical Line perched high in the stalwart group of buildings that faced the bay down at Battery Park. I gave my name to a prim young man wearing suspenders, who disappeared into a welter of desks and filing cabinets while I sat with my hat covering my nervous knees and hoped Captain Flint was too busy to see me today.
After all. New York is nice in the summertime—there are the Stadium concerts for twenty-five cents, the museums for free—no luck. Captain Flint would see me.
The prim young man guided me down the sea of office paraphernalia with his bottom swinging like the aft-end of a tugboat as he rounded the comers. There were a couple of dusty ship models perched up on shelves we passed and a few working drawings of ships' guts hung on some partitions. I began to feel better about this thing. I half wished Captain Flint would really give me a berth. By the time we reached a bit of open sea in that loft of an office where Captain Flint's desk was placed, I definitely yearned for the sting of the salty spray and would feel the buckle of a ship's deck under my sea boots.
The filing cabinets had parted in two huge waves and there, with the sun streaming down from a bay of immense windows, sat Captain Flint.
A huge, handsome hulk of a man, bald as an egg, with grizzled whiskers, a veritable sea lion, he sat his desk as if he were riding the hurricane deck of a ship. I realize that now—-until then the only ships I'd ever been on had been the splintery Hudson River sidewheelers and the Staten Island ferry boats. They had no hurricane decks and I'm still uncertain what a hurricane deck of a ship is.
I don't remember when I dropped pilot—when the boy with the suspenders left me—and I don't recall what Captain Flint said as he looked me up and down to make sure I had two arms and two legs, but I do remember the magnificent deep rumble of his voice.
This was the old man of the sea in the flesh. I gathered that some ship with a rolling name had docked that morning and Captain Brandt—that came out clear and sharp—was due aboard the good ship, "Office of the Universal Tropical Line" and if I waited aft (he actually said aft—shades of Lord Jim and Moby Dick) he, Port Captain Flint, would have a word with Captain Brandt, and maybe I'd ship out on the S.S. Rumble-rumble-rumble...
So I found my way back through the maze of prosaic office gear, exhilarated by my contact with a real seaman. As I'd sat waiting for Captain Brandt I realized those guys I'd seen down at the seaman's employment agency had taken die edge off my romantic imaginings about a life at sea. Why, they had looked like all men do when they're hunting for a job—like the quiet, hopeless-faced men I'd seen scanning the "Men Wanted" bulletins on Sixth Avenue—just a bunch of factory hands or kitchen workers.
This Captain Flint was a sailor, and my faith was renewed.
As I sat there practicing a chanty or two I'd learned (very sotto voce, of course), the outer door swung open. A man wedged into a wrinkled pencil-striped blue suit shuffled in. On his beak-nosed, swarthy head perched a smudged, hard, straw hat, and it seemed he had waxed his long, pointed mustache with some black grease—might have been fuel oil—that must have smeared his high starched collar, too. A stiff collar on a hot July day—he deserved to sweat.
With a bent-kneed shuffle he made the office rail, and the boy in suspenders, who had been doing some important rustling in a sheaf of papers on his desk, looked up and sprang to open the gate for him—he hadn't done that for me.
"O! Captain Brandt . . . Good morning, Captain Brandt," he greeted him with a servile smile.
Good morning, Captain Brandt?—Captain Brandt—My Captain!
He looked like the greasy proprietor of an unsuccessful Syrian restaurant—a seagoing pilaf peddler!
Now they had disappeared behind the filing cabinets. The light had gone out of the sun, and my dreams of the sea turned brackish and bitter. I weighed the possibility of tiptoeing carefully out of the U.T. office and, as I slowly and carefully began to rise from my chair, the broad face of the boy with the suspenders poked around the corner of a big filing cabinet.
Captain Flint wanted me up forward.
I had weighed and waited too long!
With leaden feet I stumbled down that sad vale of cabinets again. The back of my trousers felt sort of loose and breezy.
Evidently there had been an argument going on. Captain Brandt had the wind up as he sat with his straw hat resting on one knee, twirling his foot and swinging his arms to carry his points.
The first view I got of him with his hat off fascinated me so, I didn't hear what he was saying. He was one of those bald-headed old men who allow what hair they have left over the ears to grow long, usually on the left side of their head. They carefully comb the sparse hair over the bald top of the head and slick it down, deluding no one but themselves, since as they look in the mirror the dark streak of hair on the top looks as it always has. They never get the side and back views we do. Captain Brandt's coiffure was unique. The flattened stripes of his hair were arranged around his bald pate in an equal-spaced design, and with a curve ending in a spit curl high over his right eye.