Chapter 21 – From Bad To Worse
The Cannery was full of that particular kind of drunk who starts supping as soon as they wake and continue a steady battle against sobriety through all their waking hours. Ambrosius broke the sedate pace of imbibement by ordering a quadruple measure of Pusser's Rum and knocking it back in one tonsil-singeing gulp. For anyone familiar with Pusser's Rum, that was enough to get him some distance from sobriety in a matter of seconds, the effects of the fumes being somewhat more rapid than absorption through the alimentary route. He ordered another, and pretty soon was at that unpleasant stage of drunkenness where the room starts to loose its tracking and rolls disconcertingly in front of the eyes. In his half-stupor Ambrosius took out the stock certificate from his bag, set it on the bar top and sat staring at it. This piece of paper was all he had. He contemplated the frailty of material wealth, how the difference between 'mine' and 'yours' is often only paper-thin. He reached out and touched the certificate, trying to get a tangible grasp on it, but all that happened was that the writing smudged beneath his rum-sticky fingers, his wealth becoming just that little more blurred.
The barman, a hulking great sack of potatoes, noticed his customer's peculiar behaviour and read upside-down the stock certificate. He laughed.
“You're rich are you?” he asked.
Ambrosius nodded glumly.
“Bad luck.”
Ambrosius was puzzled by this comment, so he dismissed it as a philosophical statement about the ignominy of wealth.
“You must be as gutted as a halibut fillet,” continued the barman. “Have another double on me.”
The barman poured him a liberal measure of rum and Ambrosius knocked it back. “What d'you [hic] mean, gutted?”
“Upset. You must be pretty upset about the whole thing.”
“What [hic] thing?”
“The crash. Surely you've heard about it?”
“No.”
“Oh dear, you're not going to be happy.” The barman leaned over the bar. “This morning the ships started coming in empty. There's no more fish, see. At first the stocks all went through the roof as people thought the shortage would make the prices rocket. But when people realised that all the fish were notional, that they were just bits of paper, everyone lost confidence. People wanted to trade their stock in for money. By the end of the day they were selling fish stocks at literally two a penny. I don't know who'd buy them – they're worthless in themselves and they're not going to put food on the table. I don't know what is. Pretty soon there are going to be a lot of starving people in this city.”
A wave of sobriety hit Ambrosius. “You mean...”
“I mean those pieces of paper you stock traders like to wave about are only good for one thing. Let's just say there's going to be a lot of well-stocked posh privies after this morning.”
It took a good thirty seconds for this news to settle in, after which Ambrosius groaned a long, drawn-out groan. “If I give you this piece of paper will you give me all I can drink?”
“Lets see, eight hundred thousand fish, at two for a penny that's four thousand pounds. I would say that's an overpayment, but by the time I've found someone stupid enough to buy it off me the price will be drastically less than that. I'll be generous and give you your fill of drink and a room to sleep it off in. Best stick to pints though, any more rum and you'll be vomiting up your equity on my counter top.”
“Thank you,” said Ambrosius morosely. The barman poured him a pint of brown, thick hookbeer and he sipped at it dejectedly. He retired to one of the tables and took up the traditional over-pint hunch that so many broken men adopt.
People say that alcohol makes you feel better. This is not true. Ambrosius' head was now a scrapyard, in which old happy memories were unceremoniously being crushed into cubes of hatred. Through all this danced the skeleton of Sunbeam, touching things with her sepulchral finger and turning them into ashes. One minute she would be gaunt and wasted, giving vent to that terrible hyena laugh that pierced Ambrosius to the core, the next minute she would suddenly become full-bodied and rosy-cheeked, unbearably attractive and full of health. The contrast between these visions made her emotional impact all the more acute, preventing any acclimation that Ambrosius' assaulted psyche might attempt.
Strong emotions and strong drink brought about in Ambrosius a forgetful daze, until he was half hypnotised by the steady shuttling of his pint glass between the mottled table top and his unsmiling mouth. By night time he had got to that lonely stage of drunkenness where the boozer is filled with an insatiable need to talk to complete strangers. Ambrosius was just about to get up to disgorge his woes onto the barman, when out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a dark figure entering the drinking den. He looked up from his pint and unintentionally caught the eye of this peculiar character, who held it intensely without even a suggestion of a blink. Ambrosius may have been filled with bitterness, but this dark figure had it etched onto his soul. The moment of eye contact seemed to communicate the fact that here was a man who would mix all Ambrosius' woes together in a pint glass and down them for breakfast. He wore a cuirass of tanned snarlgrüber hide, much scratched and worn, as well as off-white trousers that looked to be made of old spinnakers, very baggy and loose and covered in stains that had long ago mouldered to black. In his belt was a mean-looking cutlass with a blade that was as chinked as it was sharp. The man that filled these garments looked to be strangely consumptive yet solid, as though he were a shadow made of lead. Despite his gaunt and thin face and limbs he had an unnatural paunch to him that spoke of a prolonged affair with drink, and under the skin of his face wove a network of purple and red blood vessels. There was something about this character that reminded Ambrosius of his father.
A drink was proffered seemingly without payment, and this black fisherman (for what other occupation could such a man have?) gulped it down with the unquenchable thirst of a seasoned sot. He had the barman pour him another and then, sloshing it carelessly with one hand, he turned round on his stool. Ambrosius could feel him staring with those razor-sharp eyes straight at him, daring him to look up from his drink. Ambrosius fixed his gaze on the bottom of his pint glass. Despite this, the unseemly gentleman stood up off his barstool and walked over, glass in hand. He sat on the chair across the table from Ambrosius.
“Call me Fishmael,” he said with a deep rumble evocative of a bass drum full of pitch. He did not smile, and his eyes burned with all the fires of hell, yet by some unidentifiable signal it was clear that he was being friendly towards Ambrosius, insomuch as such a man can be friendly to anyone.
Ambrosius did not reply, although the small sober part of his brain recognised the man's name.
“I was born,” embarked Fishmael, much to Ambrosius' surprise, “in the year of the great storm of '83. My mother never knew which man was my father, Old Nick knows the short-list was long enough.” At this Fishmael laughed like a drain being unblocked.
“Erm...” said Ambrosius.
“When I was two I snook onto a fishing boat. I took my berth in the stores, living off ships biscuits and rats that I caught between m'teeth.” Fishmael made a suggestive gnashing motion with his teeth, which appeared to be filed to sharp points. “The boat sank with the loss of all hands save m'self, who took refuge in a floating barrel of apples.” (The curious phenomenon of bits of ships floating in the mist is due to the fish-oil with which they are treated. This oil, with which the swim-bladder of Pisces infinitum is filled, has the remarkable property of having a negative specific gravity.) “Erm...” said Ambrosius.
“When I was four I had my first taste o' rum, which I procured off o' this very barman, myself having threatened him wi' m' cutlass. He blubbered like a baby seal after a club athwart the head.”
“Erm...” said Ambrosius.
“When I was ten I got this scar across the midships.” At this he hoisted up the cuirass and revealed a roll of flab with an old scar across it, just visible through the layer of grime that covered his belly. “'Twas a terrible accident – one of me shipmates went to cast over the stern and hooked me good and proper. Nearly yanked me clear overboard, the rascally old salt. He's dead now, what with the boat sinking on the way back to port. Lost all hands unfortunately, save for me, who clung to a floating stave o' wood.”
“Erm...” said Ambrosius.
“When I was a young lad o' fifteen I married a wench by the name o' Bess. Good ol' Bess, she was a nice girl but fat as a barrel of lard. I remember the moment I knew she was for me - 'twas when she won six month's wages off me in an arm-wrestle. Irresistible she was.”
“Erm...” said Ambrosius.
“Well, when I was twenty I shipped off with a mad old man, big beard and learned brow. Had an obsession with finches. Came up with some big theory he said would change the world, couldn't make head nor tail of it m'self. He insisted on sailing half way round the world just so we could collect a few critters and pickle 'em. Me and m'shipmates mutinied and left him stranded on some island with nought but a fishing line and a barrel o' rum to keep 'im company. 'Twas bad luck to leave him so, though, for the ship sunk afore it made port, to the loss of all hands save me, who clung to one o' the thwarts that had broken free and was floating nearby.”
“Erm...” said Ambrosius.
“When I was thirty two I ate me first dog. 'Twas a yorkshire terrier by the name of Bonnie. Good, loyal dog 'twas, a ratter that we kept aboard to keep the varmin at bay. The ship was caught becalmed – this was in the days before petrel engines, see – right out in the far mists o' the north, where the fog settles and freezes on the rigging. All the ship's supplies were gone, even the rats. Poor old Bonnie saved me and m'shipmates' lives. T'would have been what she wanted.” Fishmael shifted position.
“'Twas all in vain o'course, the ship having sunk the next day. I escaped Davy Jones' locker by clinging to a half-stove lifeboat.”
“Erm...” said Ambrosius.
“When I was a little older, fifty I must have been, I captained m'first ship. 'Twas a fishing schooner with one o' the new petrel engines, a real beauty she was. Bess had died t'other year of some ague - brought on by way of her drinking and other activities, what with me being away for most of the time and her having nought else to do – so I had nought tying me to the shore, save for our twenty nippers, but then they were all old enough to catch their own supper by that stage, the oldest being three. Any way, about the ship; I crashed her into a reef just out of port, sinking her as swift as a fart in the night. Lost all hands save me and the cook. No, come to think of it, he died too. Aye, fond memories.”
“ Erm...” said Ambrosius.
“And now, here I stand. I be sixty one years of age but don't feel a day over twenty. I put it down to all the rum. Say, I knew as soon as looked at ye that y'be drowning your sorrows. Well, I be a good drinking partner for anyone in such a mood.
Let me by you a drink...”
Just how it happened Ambrosius didn't quite know. Many, many more beverages were consumed, or 'sent below' as Fishmae l would have it. Conversation flowed in peculiar directions, the old salt being full of tales from his pockmarked career as a fisherman. It were as if Ambrosius were being brainwashed. First he had been stripped of absolutely everything he had - his love, his money, his sobriety – then he had, in Fishmael's tall tales of man and mist and fish, been presented with some new world that seemed to hold a promise of escape. It took only an hour for Ambrosius to start saying 'aye' a lot and sounding his pockets with his grapnels to haul up some change to buy Fishmael his grog. At midnight Fishmael brought out a long, thin-stemmed pipe, filled it with a pinch from a box fashioned from a rat's skull and applied a fish-tallow candle to it. He sucked demoniacally, send ing out thick billows of smoke. He then let the smoke rise from his mouth and funnel up his nose in an inverse-waterfall, a trick that looks impossible and leaves the sinuses black and tarry. After an unhealthy amount of time he exhaled and coughed raucous ly. He spat before he spoke.
“You smoke?”
“No,” said Ambrosius.
“'Tis a good, healthy habit. How not?”
“My father died whilst he was on it.”
“Then he died happy. You must try it, to put his soul at rest. Be a man, laddy.”
Ambrosius hesitated. Then, through his drink-addled mind, the gaunt face of Sunbeam loomed. “Yes, I think I will,” said Ambrosius abruptly. He took the pipe off Fishmael, nearly spilling the contents of the bowl as he did so. He put the stem in his mouth and cautiously sucked a small, acrid mouthful into his lungs.
“Ngggrhgghcoughcoughcough,” ventured Ambrosius.
“'Tis good, no?” grinned Fishmael.
Ambrosius at last managed to empty his lungs of the last dregs of the burning vapour and gasped in air greedily.
“You feel it?” asked Fishmael.
Ambrosius was just about to splutter “no” when it hit him. It wasn't how you'd imagine ecstasy to be – it was subtle, gentle, soft; not overwhelming or excessive. Suddenly all the burning in Ambrosius' lungs was forgotten and replaced with a floating happiness.
“I feel very schmerrr...”
“Har har, 'tis the fisherman's friend. Say, you been a landlubber all y'life?”
“Yes,” was all Ambrosius could muster.
“Then let me guess. You're filled with an overwhelming, head-staving urge to flee from this damnable solidity we call the ground?”
“Yes,” said Ambrosius.
“You want to leave all your troubles behind, to take a cutlass to your memories, to have no past?”
“Yes,” said Ambrosius.
“You want comradeship, adventure, danger?”
“Yes,” said Ambrosius.
“You want to taste the misty air and see the world from the top-gallant?”
“Yes,” said Ambrosius, smiling an inane smile.
“You want, m'hearty, to be like me?”
“Yes.” Ambrosius' eyes lacked focus.
“Then hold out y'left hand.”
Ambrosius held out his hand. He was lost in his dreamy haze as Fishmael pulled out his cutlass. It didn't hurt as the old mistdog drew the keen blade over his hand. From his pocket Fishmael produced a shrieker bird quill and piece of paper, the latter of which he unfolded and flattened out on the table. He wetted the nib of the quill on Ambrosius' bloody palm and passed him the pen, which Ambrosius held dumbly in his right hand.
“Make y'mark, m'lad.”
Unthinkingly, Ambrosius scrawled his signature drunkenly on the bottom of the list.
“Thar,” bellowed Fishmael. “'Tis done!”
****