[Cont.]
But as Fernando Pessoa and I are walking all over the ocean and pirating, a thought strikes me, so I turn to my friend and say:
“Behold, you and I are now like Abram and Lot, from Genesis chapter 13, who agree to split the land between them on account of being each too wealthy to fit in one place together (lo, is it not written in My Improved Retelling of Genesis?) Therefore, let us split the seven seas betwixt us twain. You can have the Atlantic and the Pacific — both parts of each: North and South — and I’ll take what’s left: the Indian and the Arctic, plus the Southern Oceans; does that sound fair? I just think that it would be wise for us to work on our own, as rugged individuals comprising a pirating duopoly, so that we’re separate while still remaining friends, rather than trying to proceed as pirate partners and performing every single scene of mayhem together. For you’ve already become Álvaro de Campos and made the ‘Maritime Ode’; and I myself just finished doing a whole run of housecalls and emergency-room doctoring with Toshiro Mifune, so I’m sorta itching to—”
“Ah, and don’t forget that you yourself also wrote ‘My Life at Sea’ as a diary entry on 29 August 2020 and then included it in your collection called Experimental Prose that Led to My Fake Novels,” Fernando Pessoa interjects. “It’s on page 585 of my paperback copy here.” (He holds it up to show me.)
“By the cross of the mouse foot, you’re right!!” I squint hard at the text, nodding with my mouth open; “I had forgotten about that.”
“Look, regarding our partnership moving forward on separate trajectories, we’re of the same mind,” sez Fernando. “I totally understand. In fact, I feel a similar restlessness. But let’s agree to meet up later, after we’re all pirated out; I still wanna share some episodes with you — your novels are so fun...”
“These are not novels,” I say.
“Imageless comic books, then; whatever… I just want you to have me back on the show, at some time. — Maybe we can do some shepherding together.”
“Alright, it’s a deal,” I hold out my arm, and we shake hands; then walk off in opposite directions on the sea to pursue our solo pirating careers.
§
The first thing I do is look for a sailing craft. (I misplaced the speedboat that Robert Altman and I drove to early 20th-century Lisbon in the previous chapter.) I love pirating on foot, but I think it would be smart to have some sort of vessel — you never know when it might come in handy. Plus it would be a good place to store my treasure chests while I’m still searching for somewhere to bury them.
So I look in Holland and find a ghost ship just floating around aimlessly. Its crew is dead, apparently due to a plague; and the captain tied himself to the helm before expiring; plus the thing is overrun with gray rats.
“This’ll do,” I say. Then I set to work cleaning it up:
I dump the corpses overboard and scare the rats away with an old-fashioned torch: they all scurry off and swim to shore and infest the houses of landlubbers. I decide to keep the dead captain, tho — I think it’s a nice touch to have him hunched over the ship’s wheel in hempen ropes like that — also, to my delight, I find that his cadaver responds to my voodoo incantations; so all I need to do is shout various curses and spells, and I can navigate the ship in a hands-free fashion.
[To be continued...]
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