Free The Ordinary Seaman by Francisco Goldman Page B

remembered the words
lumpen proletariat,
and they had made him feel even more apathetic and pointlessly far away from himself.
    “All this fucking broken glass everywhere! It just doesn’t go with me, to do nothing back,” said El Barbie. “Omar Usareli doesn’t take shit from anybody!” El Barbie’s name is Omar Usareli.
    “That’s why you live with your tongue up el Capitán’s culo, eh?” said Bernardo. “Who are you to talk about fighting back?”
    El Barbie stared threateningly at Bernardo, and Tomaso Tostado put up his hands and said, “Ya! Stop talking babosadas! Hijo de la gran puta, we’re all in this together!”
    And sweet-natured Cebo suggested lowering the ladder and inviting los blacks up for a talk, and everyone gaped at him.
    “Why not, why not try and talk to them?” said El Faro.
    “Hombre, are you crazy?” said Roque Balboa. “Remember what happened en los proyectos? You’ve already forgotten how you lost your glasses?”
    “Qué mariconada,” said El Tinieblas, picking up a length of rusted chain. “Look at all the shit we have up here to hit them with. And that night, we didn’t have anything.”
    “And if one of them has a gun?” said Pínpoyo. “Remember that scene in Indiana Yones, the guy with the big sword is ready to cut off his head and Indiana Yones pulls out a gun and shoots him!”
    “It’s true, vos,” said Caratumba, the terse Guatemalteco. “Some of them will probably have guns.”
    “Why don’t we just send El Buzo down to talk to them?” said El Barbie. “He’s a mandingo.”
    El Buzo, leaning on the rail with his curly goat’s beard and chin resting in his hand, looked at El Barbie with a deadpan gaze for a moment, then said, “Brother, yo no me meto con nadie.” That’s one of El Buzo’s favorite refrains: even when playing a double domino he always says that he doesn’t get in anyone’s way.
    “They’re just cruel delinquents,” said Bernardo.
    “Vos, son lumpen!” Esteban suddenly exclaimed, and everyone looked at him curiously, waiting for him to say something more.
    “Lumpen jodido,” he added. “Fucked lumpen, just like us.”
    “Y qué?” said Roque Balboa.
    “Y qué,” said Esteban. “I know.”
    “What’s lumpen?” asked Canario.
    “Pobre Esteban.” Panzón chuckled, giving him a soft clap on the shoulder. “Still a communist.”
    One night El Barbie, obsessed with the idea of turning a bottle into a Molotov cocktail and pitching it back, stood on deck for hours with his eyes trained on the sky, hoping to catch one before it landed. He didn’t even come close, since there was no way of telling when or wherethe next bottle was coming, but he almost broke his face tripping over a chock. Esteban hoped Barbie would run right into one of the holes on deck and disappear.
    At first, in the mornings, Capitán Elias interrogated the crew about los blacks. What do they do, what do they want, what do they say? He seemed desperate for more information, but they had little to add to what they’d already told. Capitán Elias obviously didn’t like it that los blacks were coming to the pier at night, but Esteban noticed he didn’t seem to know what to do about it. He noticed, for example, that Capitán Elias didn’t mention calling the police or even port security. Then el Capitán stopped asking about los blacks altogether, though he still went out to the end of the pier every morning as soon as he arrived, kicking the glass vials into the water whenever he found some there; and whenever he found even a shard of glass on deck, he scolded the crew for not having swept up.
    Los blacks all came, they imagined, from los proyectos, that labyrinth of brown brick buildings that begins opposite the port yard walls and the trees and the block of mainly warehouse-lined streets parallel to the waterfront. Few streets cross los proyectos, though there are sidewalks and a grass mall and trees and park benches, and at night the brick buildings