Perry Scrimshaw's Rite of Passage (16 page)

She was walking fast to the
cargo docks, just like he’d told her to. He wondered if she’d taken
the jar money too. He hoped Joel would understand.

He leapt down the steps,
wanting to be by her side to protect her. She moved so quickly,
Perry had to jog to close the gap. At the docks he eased his way
around the stacks of crates, keeping an eye out for Maxwell and his
cronies.

He eased round one of the
stacks, his back flush against the wood. Nearly there.

And there she was, walking
along the jetty. There was a ship being loaded. It would do, they’d
bribe their way on. The gunboats in the harbour were keeping things
in order. The captain stood at the foot of the gangway, smoking a
pipe. He shouted at a minion to fasten something and sucked again
at his pipe. Eva approached him and looked around. Looked around
for him.

Perry stepped from behind the
crate and onto the jetty. There was a flash of movement. A heavy
fist thundered into his midriff. He gasped desperately for air. A
sack came over his head, tied roughly around his neck. Stars of
light made it through the gaps in the hessian, not enough to see
who, to see how many. He couldn’t breathe. He kicked his legs out,
tried to make a sound and the blow came, cracking into his head.
Pain exploded orange and red. He stopped struggling and his legs
slid from under him. He tried to wriggle free. Then a second blow
landed and Perry lost consciousness.

The Screw
Steamer powered through
the sea, slicing
the blue into even streams of white froth. Several crates of
provisions were strapped tight beneath deck. The lifeboats on deck
were all covered with tarpaulins.

Under one of the tarps, Perry
stirred. His vision was dull and his head ached in a way he didn’t
think possible. His mouth, stuffed and tied with a rag, was dry and
his ears rung as if placed to a seashell. He wriggled. The bindings
on his hands and ankles gave. Just a bit.

He wriggled again.

17

9 months later.

Buenos Aires, February,
1891

On the world map it was little
more than a blue thread, yet to Perry, the water he spied between
the corrugated shacks and warehouses was so vast it could not
really be a river. It was surely the Atlantic. From his spot in the
sunshine, he made out dots in a random formation on the blue
horizon, enough boats for an invasion. A whistle shrilled, pulling
Perry away from his daydream. Break was over.

He tucked his
newspaper under his arm and hopped off the crate. He followed some
Italian workers talking over one another and passed a group
of
Criollos
finishing up a game of
Truco
on a stack of timber. Soon, they were all back
in
Julio
Freight
Station.

Steam hissed from the Tucumán
train; black and brooding as a resting bull. Freight cars heaped
high with bright yellow lemons trailed behind. Perry joined up with
Vázquez, a stocky fellow a couple of years older than himself.

Their pairing
up was an unspoken thing. They weren’t friends exactly, but both
were casual workers who often found themselves working at the same
company at the same time.
Puerto
Madero
was funny like that – you got to
know most faces after a time.

Perry liked working with
Vázquez; he was the strong, quiet sort. A week passed quicker if
you didn’t have to spend it responding to the same questions. Where
was he from? Was he thinking of going home? How long would he be
staying in Buenos Aires? In what lodging was he living? How much
was it? Did they have any space? God it was tiresome.

Vázquez pushed a trolley drum
over to one of the freight cars and locked it in place. Perry
wrested on his gloves. They were damp with sweat and oil. He hopped
up onto the trolley’s ledge and leant against the freight car for
support. He reached back and a hatch key was instantly placed in
his palm.

‘
Gracias
,’ Perry said.
Vázquez grunted.

Perry locked the key in place
and wound the handle with both hands. He did it as fast as he
could, enjoying the ache in his arms. Slowly, the teeth of the
hatch prised apart and the first lemons tumbled out into the
trolley drum.

‘
Rápido
no
?’ said Perry.

Vázquez didn’t look
impressed.

All afternoon,
they took turns, competing with one another to open the hatches as
quickly as they could. By the end of the day Perry’s muscles were
raw and his shirt soaked through with sweat. Vázquez didn’t look
nearly as tired and had come out on top in their little game. Perry
consoled himself that he was getting quicker and dunked his head in
a bucket of water, pawing away the worst of the grime and dust from
his face. He grabbed his bag and joined the queue of workers
outside the station office and let the sun dry his face and hair.
While he waited, the train shunted out of
Julio
station. A caterpillar of steam
trailed into the azure sky. The Italians, ahead of him in the
queue, lit up smokes and shared one with Vázquez. They never
bothered to offer him one but he didn’t mind; though he liked a
smoke now and then it was a habit he couldn’t afford to get
into.

The queue
shrunk until it was Perry’s turn to enter the station office. It
was a functional space with a simple desk, filing cabinets and a
worn stone floor. It was stuffy, starved of the
costonera
breeze. Still, someone had
to work there he supposed.

‘
Siguiente!
’

‘
Señor
.’ Perry stepped forward and
noticed a gecko clinging to the pock-marked wall.

The foreman, a sun-crinkled old
timer called Campi, nodded in acknowledgment and counted down a
register with a pencil, scribbled something and then handed Perry
an envelope. Perry prised it apart and did a quick count of his
wages. It was all there.

‘
Sign,’ Campi
said, in accented English.

Perry signed, noticing the
other men had simply put an X by their names.

‘
No work
tomorrow, but we have work Monday,’ said the foreman.

He’d take all the work he
could,.‘Definitely. Put me down.’

‘
You good
worker,’ Campi reached into his pocket.

‘
Thank
you.’

‘
Here,’ the
foreman took out a large padlock, ‘lock the warehouse door on your
way.’

It wasn’t something he had been
asked to do before.

‘
You’re the
last one,’ Campi said, as if by explanation.

Outside, a breeze was picking
up. The warehouse was a short walk along the train tracks. The
doors were still ajar and he went inside. The deep smell of soil
hit him first, then the tang of lemons. The crates were stacked
high, wall to wall, perhaps twelve, maybe thirteen hundred in
number. He looked around; light cut in through gaps in the roof.
Satisfied, he left, securing the padlock firmly in place.

He left
Julio
station and went
north to
San Telmo
. He stopped at a corner bar. It was a cheap place where the
dockworkers stood in the street, drinking, chatting and smoking. He
preferred it inside and took one of the splintered stools at the
bar. A cup of wine appeared almost immediately in front of
him.

‘
Gracias
Lucho
,’ Perry slapped down a ten-centavo
coin and put the cup to his lips.

The wine was
warm and heavy. He loved the buzz once it slid down and burrowed in
the pit of his stomach. His temples softened. He got out his
newspaper again,
The Southampton
Times
, and continued from where he was
reading on his break.

When he finished, he folded it
into four and placed it on the bar under an ashtray.

‘
That one any
good?’ Lucho was cleaning a cup out with a grubby towel.

Perry shrugged.

‘
I’ll have the
next lot of copies in for you Tuesday, maybe Wednesday.’

‘
Great,
thanks.’

‘
What’s the
latest news in England then?’

Perry sighed. ‘Hard to say, the
most recent one I have is four months out of date.’

‘
Better than
nothing right?’

‘
I
guess.’

‘
Well if you
miss home so much why don’t you just go there?’

‘
That’s the
plan.’ Perry wasn’t in the mood for chatting and turned the
barstool so it faced outside.

Plenty of dockworkers were
still outside, pockets stuffed with weekly wages. A couple of
whores were out, cunningly early, picking out the weakest ones. He
thought of Eva and prayed that she wasn’t still at Ma’s; that she’d
got out of there. He shuddered and knocked back the rest of the
wine.

18

America Street
was a dozen blocks back from the port, right in the heart of
La Boca
. It was mostly
cheap lodging houses serving only to cram as many workers and
immigrant families as could pay and fit.

It was early Saturday morning
and getting light, but the street was still in the clutches of
Friday night. Halfway down the block, a man left a brothel and
stumbled into the road. Rats gathered around small heaps of
rubbish, while an accordion’s sad notes floated from a nearby tango
bar.

Perry let the raggedy curtain
fall back onto the window. It didn’t make much difference; it was
as opaque as fishing net. Everything about the place was lacking.
The four rows of bunks, the groaning springs that held. Just. While
he worried that the big Irishman on the top bunk would fall through
during the night and crush him, his other roommates slept well. No
doubt they were aided by booze, but their sleep-sputtering was just
another thing to stop him sleeping sound.

Today he didn’t mind though. He
wanted to get to the docks first thing. He sat on the edge of his
bunk and gathered his trousers and felt for the hidden pocket
stitched on the inside. Banknotes crinkled under the fabric. He
pulled on the trousers and snapped on his braces. Before slipping
on his shoes he stood on the ends; something his fellow roommates
did - for the scorpions, they claimed - though he’d never seen
one.

Perry left, startling a brace
of cockroaches in the corridor, sending them darting into holes in
the wall. Slimy alien things they were, double the size of the ones
he’d seen in England. He went down the rickety stairs and out into
the open air.

It was a fine morning, likely
to be another scorcher. Down the street a couple of men stumbled
past, leaning on one another, staggering this way and that until
they landed in a heap of laughter on the floor. It made him feel
good, seeing two friends like that. It reminded him of the boys and
Joel.

At the end of
the street he turned onto
Defensa.
The street had short orange trees planted in rows
along the pavement. The houses were mostly three-storey, stacked in
a neat line on either side of the road with brightly painted
shutters over the windows and balconies. Mud, fish and salt on the
breeze were signs enough that the
Rio de
la Plata
was only a few blocks
away.

A pony and trap trotted down
the street towards him. On the back was a stack of sick-looking
carrots covered in flies. They looked awful, but he still found
himself salivating. He was saving hard and had skipped dinner the
night before, but he knew he had better eat something. A block
further there was a cheap patisserie he knew, and he bought two
croissants. They were still warm, and he ripped one open, letting
steam puff heavenwards from the white flesh within. He stuffed it
in his mouth, salty, buttery and delicious.

When he arrived at the port, he
was surprised how busy it was - being so early. Two passenger
liners were being loaded and the docks were hectic with people. He
threaded his way through porters wheeling luggage and passengers.
At the ticket office, he was brought up short.

The queue was so long that
there were people snaking around the pillars. Perhaps he should
have come even earlier or not stopped at the patisserie. All the
same, the prices were notoriously unstable and he wasn’t about to
wait in line only to find out he didn’t have enough. He pushed his
way to the front, cutting between the lines.

‘
My brother’s
at the front,’ he lied in his best Spanish and pushed and barged
his way until he was close enough to the counter window. From there
he could see the poster advertising the passenger liner he wanted.
It was like a long black nose coming out of the picture,
backdropped with orange sun-rays. The price advertised for
Southampton was the equivalent of thirty-six pesos for Steerage,
two higher than a month ago. That would take him another three
weeks to put aside! Why could they not just keep the prices steady
for a while, give him a fighting chance. He bunched his fists up in
anger.

‘
Hey, get in
line, there’s a queue here!’ someone yelled. Perry barged past him,
face hot with anger.

‘
I was just
checking the prices you idiot.’

‘
Idiot? Me?
You didn’t need to go to the counter to find that out, they’re
listed over there!’

A few of the crowd within
earshot laughed and Perry shoved his way back out. When he got to
the railings he gave them a kick.