Big Money

The Camera Eye (48)

westbound to Havana Puerto-Mexico Galveston out of Santander (the glassy estuary the feeling of hills hemming the moist night an occasional star drips chilly out of the rainy sky a row of lights spills off the muffled shore) the twinscrews rumble

at last westbound away from pension spinsters tasty about watercolors the old men with crocodile eyes hiding their bloody claws under neat lisle gloves the landscapes corroded with literature westbound

for an old man he is old

for an old man he is grey

but a young man’s heart is full of love

get away old man get away

at the dinnertable westbound in the broadlit saloon the amplybosomed broadbeamed la bella cubana in a yellow lowcut dress archly with the sharp rosy nail of her littlest finger points

the curlyhaired young bucks from Bilbao (louder and funnier) in such tightwaisted icecreamcolored suits silk shirts striped ties (westbound to Havana for the sugarboom) the rich one has a diamond ring tooshiny eyes look the way her little finger jabs

but a young man’s heart is full of love

she whispers He came out of her cabin when I was on the way to the bath Why was she giggling in number sixtysix? the rich one from Bilbao orders champagne

to echo the corks that pop in an artillery salute from the long table where the Mexican general tall solemnfaced with a black mustache and five tall solemnfaced bluejowled sons a fat majordomo and a sprinkling of blank henshaped ladies who rustle out hurriedly in black silk with their handkerchiefs to their mouths as soon as we round the cape where the lighthouse is

westbound (out of old into new inordinate new undeciphered new) southerly summertime crossing (towards events) the roar in the ears the deep blue heaving the sun hot on the back of your hand the feel of wet salt on the handrails the smell of brasspolish and highpressure steam the multitudinous flickering dazzle of light

and every noon we overeat hors d’œuvres drink too much wine while gigglingly with rolling eyes la bella to indicate who slept with who sharply jabs with littlest pinsharpened finger

la juerga

alas the young buck from Bilbao the one with the diamond ring suffers amidships (westbound the ancient furies follow in our wake) a kick from Venus’s dangerous toe retires to bed we take our coffee in his cabin instead of the fumoir the ladies interest themselves in his plight

two gallegos loosemouthed frognecked itinerant are invited up from the steerage to sing to the guitar (Vichy water and deep song argyrol rhymes with rusiñol)

si quieres qu’el carro cante

mójele y déjele en rio

que después de buen moja’o

canta com’ un silbí’o

and funny stories a thousand and one Havana nights the dance of the millions the fair cubanas a ellas les gustan los negros

but stepping out on deck to get a breath of briny afternoon there’s more to be seen than that rusty freighter wallowing in indigo el rubio the buck from Bilbao who has no diamond ring beset with yelling cubans la bella leads with heaving breast a small man with grey sideburns is pushed out at el rubio they shove at him from behind

escándalo

alternately the contestants argue with their friends who hold them back break loose fly at each other with threshing arms are recaptured pulled apart

shipsofficers intervene

pale and trembling the champions are led away he of the sideburns to the ladies’ drawingroom el rubio aft to the fumoir

there we masticate the insults what was it all about? no señor no el rubio grabs a sheet of the notepaper of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique but fingers refuse to hold the pen while he twined them in his long curly hair an unauthorized observer who had become involved in the broil misspelled glibly to his dictation

a challenge

and carried it frozenfaced to the parties in the ladies’ drawingroom coño

then we walk el rubio back and forth across the palpitating stern discuss rapiers pistols fencingpractice

now only the westbound observer appears at meals el rubio mopes at the end of the bunk of his beclapped friend and prepares for doom the ship’s agog with dueltalk until mon commandant a redfaced Breton visits all parties and explains that this kind of nonsense is expressly forbidden in the regulations of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique and that the musical gallegos must go back to the steerage from whence they sprang despair

enter with martial tread mi general expert he says in affairs of honor un militar coño vamos may he try to conciliate the parties

all to the fumoir where already four champagnebottles are ranked cozily iced in their whitemetal pails coño sandwiches are served mi general clears up the misunderstanding something about los negros and las cubanas overheard in the cabin of the bucks from Bilbao by listening vamos down the ventilator many things were that better were unsaid but in any case honor insulated by the ventilator was intact gingerly the champions take each others hands coño palmas sombreros música mi general is awarded the ear

in the steerage the gallegos sing and strum

el rubio at the bar confides to me that it was from la bella of the pink jabbing finger and the dainty ear at ventilators that he with the diamond ring received the

and that he himself has fears coño una puta indecente

arrival in Havana an opulentlydressed husband in a panamahat receives la bella the young bucks from Bilbao go to the Sevilla-Biltmore and I

dance of the millions or not lackofmoney has raised its customary head inevitable as visas

in the whirl of sugarboom prices in the Augustblistering sun yours truly tours the town and the sugary nights with twenty smackers fifteen eightfifty dwindling in the jeans in search of lucrative

and how to get to Mexico

or anywhere