‘Oh, you are knowing what the people are like here, chefe, no?’ said the agent, apparently unaware of any irony. ‘Too damn ignorant to know any better. Werewolves and nagas and ghosts, pah,’ he added — thus neatly encompassing East and West in one contemptuous phrase — and appeared to be preparing to spit until he caught sight of Da Silva’s expression and thought better of it, turning the aborted expectoration into a cough.
Da Silva, who had no objection at all to spitting as an expression of contempt, wondered with some amusement what Gomes would say if the agent knew that he saw ghosts all the time. Including the faint shade of a long-forgotten bureaucrat — who had presumably, therefore, died in harness — in this very office. Not only that, but the captain had encountered far more dangerous creatures. More dangerous than wolves in many ways.
It was curious, though, the way the subject had come up. Or maybe not so curious. I ought to be getting used to it by now, he thought resignedly, feeling a little like spitting himself. You’d think I was some kind of lodestone. So wouldn’t thatjust be a surprise if it does turn out to be a werewolf or something of the sort, just waiting for Da Silva to put into port.
Gomes, unaware of the captain’s thoughts, prattled on. ‘But I have good news! I can do you a favour! I am hearing of a sailor who is looking for a ship, a man with the mate’s chitty, right here in town.’
Da Silva grunted non-committally. Though he had not met Gomes before, he recognized the type. There were Gomeses in every port in every country in the world, and somehow they made the wheels of commerce go round and kept him in business. But, like all the others, this man was more likely to tailor his reportage to what a listener wanted to hear rather than anything that resembled the truth. Probably some decrepit old pirate who spends his days so drunk on palm whisky he can’t find his arse without a map, he thought. ‘Really.’
‘Oh, yes, chefe,’ the other said unctuously. ‘An American man,’ as if this negated anything the captain had been thinking. ‘I shall be arranging a meeting, yes?’
It couldn’t do any harm to meet the man, Da Silva said to himself with a sigh, on the off chance that Gomes was actually correct. ‘Yes, go ahead, Senhor Gomes,’ he said.
Which was why Captain Da Silva was currently awaiting the arrival of one Edward Harris, lately of Boston, Massachusetts, while sweating and soundly cursing each and every equatorial land for its vile climate. Formality be damned, he had decided, and had shed his coat. Now he was mopping moisture from the humid zone under his eyepatch in a vain attempt to make wearing the thing more comfortable. You could probably grow mushrooms under there, he thought irritably.
However the captain was not thinking about the imminent Harris but was contemplating the ghosts that mingled with the breathing crowds at the quayside under the sullen monsoon sky. They were of little help, but that was no more than he expected. The damned things were only shades, after all, memories of the people they had been, haunting the place where they had died. Very few of them seemed to retain any kind of awareness for very long, yet today they seemed — restive, somehow. Disturbed. Sometimes he thought they were able to communicate with each other in a kind of dim, distant way, and now it was almost as if they were all infected with nervousness, odd though that sounded. What would make a ghost nervous?
He knew a way to ask, but that involved summoning a real spirit, something he was reluctant to do. Even now he found the thought of necromancy repellent, and always would. It was a kind of slavery, and that purely disgusted him. Having been, for many years, as good as owned himself, he was reluctant to force another soul to his own will. Even if the body it had once inhabited was no longer living.
The char-wallah who had supplied Gomes with tea, and whom he had collared on leaving the agent’s office, had not only confirmed the man’s story but had added a considerable amount of grisly detail of his own, presumably in the interests of artistic verisimilitude, in exchange for appropriate remuneration — not to mention offering to bring the hysterical mother of the latest victim for a small additional sum. Da Silva had turned this last down.
I can’t just let it rest, he thought. Damn it. And was wondering what to do about it when the man he was waiting for arrived.
Harris was unmistakable, especially in a crowd whose main racial mix, ghostly and living alike, consisted of Indian and Portuguese in various combinations. He was nearly six feet tall, heavily built, and as red-haired as Judas Iscariot.
The captain hastily replaced his eyepatch. Informality was one thing, but he knew the scar that ran from eyebrow to cheekbone was not a sight to let loose on anyone at a first encounter. On the quayside, Harris caught his gaze and gave an odd little wave, one that might one day grow up to be a salute.
‘Captain Da Silva?’ he called.
‘Senhor Harris, I presume?’
‘That’s me, skipper. Permission to come aboard?’
‘Come along, Senhor Harris.’
Twenty minutes later, the Isabella had a new third mate, and Da Silva was silently apologizing to the absent Gomes: Harris seemed both sober and competent. Which probably meant there was something wrong with him. But for the time being the captain was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, being a firm believer in letting people have enough rope to hang themselves rather than trying to do it for them.
This captain seems like a regular sort, even if he does look like a pirate with that black eyepatch. I guess he’s been at sea since Pontius was a pilot, but I’d bet fifty dollars that he’s never come across a sailor with my particular problem before. I’ve gotten used enough to signing on for one trip and being given my papers when we tie up at the other end that it don’t bother me no more, but I don’t reckon I’ll ever get used to the change that comes over me every full moon, and neither will any skipper. Still, after kicking my heels in this godforsaken hole all this time I reckon I would have shipped out with the Flying Dutchman if he’d happened to put into port.
I recall feeling pretty goddam down, watching the Nimrod shrink into the distance. It wasn’t so much being without a berth again, like I said, I’m used to that — it was where I was stuck ashore. Places like these, they ain’t healthy. If the malaria don’t get you the yellow fever will, and if the typhoid don’t, the dysentery will, what ignorant fellows call the dire rear. Though I can’t say I’m prone to catching regular human-type diseases any more it don’t mean I couldn’t go down with distemper or rabies, and I wasn’t fixing to put it to the test.
Last month I’d gotten away with it by locking my door — my granma could have picked the lock but I pushed the bed against it — and tethering myself to the bedframe with my collar and chain. It’s what I aim to do every month, but on a ship there ain’t no privacy. I tell my messmates I’m going down sick, but when they see what sort of sick they can’t wait to leave me be. Since this thing happened to me, Mrs Harris’s little boy’s been worse than a pariah, but working the sea’s all I know how to do.
Da Silva shook hands with Harris. The American’s hand was the size of a bear’s paw but his grip was merely firm, not bone-crushing. With hands that big, he had no need to prove anything. The captain lit a cheroot and offered one to Harris, who refused politely.