The stiffness in Wilson’s knees gradually disappeared. After a few weeks, he was able to go about the shanty city with Dr. Boursaly. At first his eyes could not grow accustomed to the misery he saw there, then one morning, all at once, he became inured to the sufferings of others. A hot African wind blew the stench hard against the island, the tropical sun hung like a yellow grapefruit in the relentless blue sky, and as the doctor had predicted, Wilson began to drink.
Hard against the fence of the barracoon stood Quatre Sables’s business district. Here an alley of rusty tin-sided rumshops intersected with a wider street of brothels and other commercial concerns. There were money changers’ tents, stalls that sold vegetables, pawnshops, a booth in which a sort of Punch and Judy show with shadow puppets ran continuously. Twice a week, old men spread blankets full of ruta—giant African turnips, the dietary staple of the island—along the muddy banks that passed for a sidewalk. The accepted medium of exchange was the cowrie shell, American cigarettes, and any type of money—given value by the locals according to size and color rather than denomination. Large bright bills from Italy and France would fetch more ruta than U.S. greenbacks worth ten times their value.
Wilson and the doctor spent several hours of each day at the Black Spot, a tin-sided, open-front rumshop run by a Jamaican ex-pirate who called himself Ben Gunn after the old pirate in Treasure island. A warped piece of plywood set on rusty fifty-gallon oil drums served for the bar; packing crates and empty five-gallon paint tubs, for chairs and tables. The drink of choice at this establishment was rumfustian, a noxious mixture of native beer, gin, and a sort of sherry made from wild berries. A half pound of cowrie shells would buy a dirty plastic milk jug full of the stuff. Wilson drank his rumfustian out of a chipped, handleless coffee mug. The doctor did not bother with such niceties, swilling the stuff straight from the jug. A Bupandan tinka band played on a platform of tires and cardboard boxes across the way. The pleasant lilting music rose with the heat into the hot blue sky.
Today, Wilson listened to the music and watched the crowds pass along the street. At that hour of the afternoon, the place was empty except for a couple of drunks passed out facedown on the muddy floor. Ben Gunn sat propped on a three-legged stool behind the bar, big marijuana spliff smoldering between his teeth, his eyes red with the stuff. His hair hung down in gnarled dreadlocks, tied at the end with bedraggled bits of ribbon; his skin showed the unhealthy color of burnt coffee. Roaches the size of Wilson’s hand ran out of the rusty barrels and over the plywood counter. Ben Gunn ignored them.
Dr. Boursaly assured Wilson that dengue fever did not affect the liver permanently and ordered another milk jug of rumfustian. He carried about ten pounds of cowrie shells and assorted Italian bills in a worn black medical bag held together with duct tape, which he kept nestled safely between his knees.
“I told you there’s nothing to do on this island but drink,” Dr. Boursaly said to Wilson when Ben Gunn straggled over with the fresh jug.
“Maybe for you,” Wilson said. “But I’m getting out of here as soon as Cricket comes back.”
Dr. Boursaly shook his head. “Except for the Thirty Captains not one of us gets off this island for good. It’s too much of an international secret. Can you see the headlines in the New York Times? ‘Pirate Paradise Discovered off African Coast—Slave Trade Alive and Well’? The decadent nations of the West would have to do something. And that wouldn’t please certain people in certain circles in Europe and America and Japan who make quite a bit of money off this place.”
“I still can’t believe it,” Wilson said with a loose gesture indicating the activity of the waterfront. “Pirates! Thousands of them. And the Thirty Captains sound like something out of Gilbert and Sullivan. Who are they? Where do they come from?”
“They are the ruined men of all nations,” Dr. Boursaly said. “The hunted refugees of all vanquished parties, everyone that is wretched and daring. And where is there not misery and vice in this unhappy age?… I’m quoting, but you get the idea. It’s nothing new, of course; these rat’s nests spring up like weeds at the edge of the world. Think of the great pirate republic of Port Royal, Jamaica, in the seventeenth century; think of New Providence and Tortuga in the eighteenth, of Campeche and Key West in the nineteenth. In any case, pirates below the rank of captain who decide to retire from the bloody trade can only do so here at Quatre Sables. There’s a sort of retirement community on the other side of the island, a little village with a sulfur spring, full of aging buccaneers. Pegleg Bay they call it. If the men refuse the honor of living there, the only other option is a watery grave.”
“The mon’s right,” Ben Gunn called over from the bar. “There’s no land for us Brothers of the Coast but right here at Quatre Sables. An’ when we die, there’s still a watery grave to rest our bones. It’s in the Articles, mon. Dead shipmates are always buried at sea.”
“But you are a different case, Wilson.” Dr. Boursaly leaned across the jug of rumfustian and lowered his tone. “So terribly different. I’m worried that you might not make it to retirement.”
Wilson felt the back of his neck prickle. “Oh, Christ …” he murmured.
“Of course it’s none of my business, but I understand your Mistress Page is already spoken for.”
“Aye, mon, she’s the Portugee’s woman,” Ben called from the bar. “The Portugee’s no one to fuck with.”
“Shut up, Ben,” the doctor said.
“Who is this Portugee?” Wilson said.
“He’s chairman of the Council of Thirty Captains, he—”
“No.” Wilson made a quick chopping motion. “I don’t want to know. Whatever comes.”
The doctor shrugged.
“It’s a wise mon that don’t worry about the sky gonna fall,” Ben Gunn said from behind the bar. “ ’Cause no hat’s gonna save his po’ head from the big pieces.”