Thirteen
Marx, Engels and Nietzsche had all come down to the banks of the Seine to see the pirates off.
‘I’m sorry you won’t reconsider things,’ said Marx, warmly clasping the Captain’s hand. ‘You still have so much to offer the world of philosophical thought.’
‘That’s true,’ said the Pirate Captain. ‘But the trouble with this philosophy lark is that it involves a lot of introspection. And the thing I’m probably proudest of is my near total lack of self-awareness. It’s what makes me the man I am.’
‘Well, look after yourself. Now that this little scallywag’ – Marx gave Nietzsche a friendly wink – ‘isn’t causing us mischief, I feel it is only a matter of time before our reputation is restored and Communism really takes off. Especially now I’ve adopted some of your more pork-orientated ideas.’
‘It’s all in the type of glaze you use,’ said the Captain. ‘I honestly can’t emphasise that enough.’
‘And we’d like to give you this, as a going-away present,’ said Engels, handing him a painting. It showed the Pirate Captain looking burly and heroic, stood atop a big red shooting star. The rosy-cheeked peasant girl who seemed to feature in a lot of the communists’ paintings was holding on to his leg adoringly.
‘Aaarrrr,’ said the Pirate Captain, ‘I’m touched. It will go very well with my new giant novelty candle.’ He nodded towards where a couple of pirates were hefting the wax Queen Victoria onboard the boat. Then he turned towards Nietzsche. ‘So then, young man. You’ll remember what I’ve taught you?’
‘Yes, Pirate Captain,’ replied Nietzsche, looking serious. ‘Aloof – funny – deep. Always in that order.’
‘I’m sure the right girl will come along soon,’ said Jennifer. She kissed Nietzsche on the cheek, and he turned a bright shade of red, but grinned from ear to ear.
‘They’re going to kick themselves when they realise that in saving all those crowned heads, they’ve put back the revolution by about fifty years,’ said the pirate with a scarf, as the boat slowly pulled out from the jetty.
‘Yes, I think that’s what they call the ultimate irony,’ said the Pirate Captain. ‘Or possibly the penultimate irony. Because in many ways the ultimate irony is the fact that philosophy has lost us our sponsorship deal. It turns out that Perkins’ Pomades don’t want to be associated with’ – he read from the letter they had received that morning, ‘“– the kind of pirate who ends an adventure with reasoned and sensitive debate rather than multiple eviscerations and/or explosions”. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained, or whatever the appropriate expression is in this instance.’
They turned away from watching Paris fade into the distance and looked instead at the pirates who were playing with the various bits of Nietzsche’s gigantic tin suit, which they had brought onboard the boat as a souvenir. At the moment what appeared to be Nietzsche’s hand with some stripy pirate legs coming out of the bottom of it was running about trying to catch Nietzsche’s elbow, which was getting tangled up in the rigging.
The Captain sighed. ‘In a way, don’t we all build up an impregnable metal suit around ourselves?’ he said wisely. ‘Except the suit is made of emotions and neuroses and things, instead of tin, so you can’t see it. And it doesn’t have light bulbs for eyes. And it’s not steam-powered.’
‘That’s very true,’ said the pirate with a scarf, who didn’t have the faintest clue what the Pirate Captain was going on about.
And with that, the pirates went downstairs to do some shantying.