Margarita Cat

Copyright 2011 Bruce Van Sant

Brother George

Strange things always seem to happen around me and not around others. Perhaps because I usually take things at face value, or, to say it another way, perhaps I've learned to stoically expect the worst of my fellows. Take Ziggie, for example.

I had single handed from Martinique to Margarita in mild weather, rolling slowly and off the wind for nearly two days. My mission to Margarita included picking up a new ship's cat.

My last Margarita cat got pregnant in Manzanillo. Fianchi had a new girlfriend who loved cats. He had an idea of breeding the Margarita strain into Dominican cats. French Corsaire pirates with Dominican Spanish pirates, he said. It somehow seemed to him to blend with the tropical fish business he wanted to develop.

Somehow, and with his girlfriend's help, he had managed to get my cat pregnant while we drank Presidente at the Galeon. Thus my cat stayed behind in Manzanillo as part of Fianchi's eugenics project.

So for a time Jalan Jalan sailed catless, an unhappy state. I intended to call first at the desolate Los Frailes islands where I could pick up a new Margarita cat, this time the genuine article.

The Frailes stick out of the ocean like broken teeth just to the northeast of Margarita, sort of a small version of the Testigos. Constructed of sheer rock and cactus, feral Abyssinian cats live there on shellfish, bird eggs and rodents. They drink the puddled rain water in the wet season, and they chew the cactus in the dry season.

At big Fraile you moor much like in Sweden's west coast archipelago, setting out pitons in the cracks of the cliff face and mooring to them with springs.

Big black oval mussels grow at the base of the cliff as far down as three feet under water on the near vertical rock. They clump together in walls of mussels up to a foot thick. When the afternoon sun strikes the cliff full, you can use your bottom scraper to fill a bucket in seconds. The drop-off is so steep one has to tread water while harvesting the mussels from the rock.

I boil the mussels in a pot of sea water with onions and garlic and rum. When cool, I have a gourmet meal on the ones that opened, a meal almost as fine as the moule-a-la-creme at L'vieux Honfleur.

The feral cats on Frailes, come right off a mural from Nefertiti's tomb, their DNA spiraling uninterrupted through the millennia. If you remain quiet a long time after harvesting your mussels and stare into the scrub at the waters edge, you'll see them waiting patiently to grab the scraps from the shells that you broke. They hide so well you have to use night vision tricks to see them. Their tall pointy ears tip them off first, then their slant eyed challenge. You need good luck to catch one of their young, but I intended to do just that by grabbing a kitten's legs as she reached for bit of mussel.

The Match supermarket in Fort de France, the same one I had shopped in Honfleur and Paris, had changed hands to the Prix Unique chain. With the change came an air of client friendliness. Someone had trained the sour old French clerks to smile. Young, attractive Martinique boys and girls met the shoppers cheerily at the door and bade everyone well on their way at the checkout.

Copyright 2011 Bruce Van Sant

Margarita Cat

I sort of missed the nasty exchanges with Match's security people who impounded any packages when I arrived, and did everything but frisk me when I left. Prix Unique made shopping so pleasant that I needed a taxi to haul my purchases the three blocks to the boat. Besides the eight 5-liter boxes of the `trois étoiles' vin du table, I had procured enough cheeses, terrines and patés to last the entire summer in Venezuela.

By the time Jalan Jalan raised the isle of Margarita I suffered an uncomfortable ball of constipation that seemed to fill my lower half. I had finished most of one box of wine during the trip, but the cheeses, terrines and patés, along with two baguettes and one batard, really did me in.

Turning west and finally downwind, the boat began to roll. The boat's rolling ensured an abrupt deblocage. I developed severe diarrhea which led to long stints of inattention to navigation, which in turn caused me to slip by the Frailes islands in the three knot current which runs there. It disgusted me to see a whole summer's worth of French delicacies frothing in my wake, sailing for the Yucatan at three Knots.

My shameful gluttony forced me to a landfall at Juan Griego on Margarita. No Frailes this time. No feral kitten and no loading up on mussels. But at least we would lay in the Corsaire capital of Johnny the Greek.

Edgardo's brother, Roberto, owned a seaside restaurant in Juan Griego. Edgardo did sunset drinking tours in Porlamar with his houseboat. I had brought in some Dominican liquors for his business, and Edgardo always liked to trade. I thought perhaps here Roberto would trade a good steak dinner for some French wine. The free port of Margarita, still controlled by Indians and not Caracas, encouraged such transactions.

After dinner Roberto introduced me to Hermano Jorge. The bearded monk sat down and reached across the terrace table to warmly and strongly shake my hand with both of his, banally shouting, "Not your first time here? Oh-Ho! Then you know Juan Griego's famous pretty blond girls, ché? Descendants of the Corsaires, ché?"

Ziggie Castagnelli! While he may have played `Hermano Jorge' I could see Argentinean Ziggie behind the game. He could no more resist the ché habit than could Ché Guevara, who won his nickname from it.

I hadn't seen Ziggie in years, and the beard had me fooled, but not the ché. We sat and talked a short time, and not once did `Hermano Jorge' let on that we knew each other, so I played along, wondering what he'd cooked up.

Roberto wandered off to take care of business and Hermano Jorge drew up his chair so close to mine that our knees touched, bringing to mind the recent spurt of scandals relating to homosexual priests. I wondered if it extended to phony friars. His hard right arm embraced me Latino style while he changed octaves and croaked into my ear in soto voce English, "Ever bit a gray gay man?"

"What!" I could come up with no better as I struggled to get loose. He persisted.

"Gay man! Gay man! Grand gay man, ever been there?" He tried hard not to make a scene, but clearly anxious to identify himself to me, he nearly wrestled me to the ground.

Grand Cayman. Geez!

"Jesus, Ziggie, let me go! I remember you, and I won't blow your cover. Just stick to Spanish so I can understand you, all right?"

Roberto returned to the terrace with three long neck Polar beers between the fingers of one hand. When he spoke, crazy Hermano Jorge boomed out over the hubbub of both the diners on the terrace and the commotion of two fishermen emptying the gear

Margarita Cat

Copyright 2011 Bruce Van Sant

from their piniero not four feet away at the high tide line.

"I met this young man before! In Cayman! Isn't that amazing?"

"Ziggie," I whispered, "Hermano Jorge, Archangel Gabriel, what the hell do I care? I'm not involved!" nearly shouting the last. Roberto didn't notice. Latinos always shout, and Gringos always said weird things. He sat down and passed over the beers.

The last thing I needed, getting involved in one of Ziggie's schemes. If the ensuing imbrolgio looked anything like the last, only the innocent — like me — would go to jail.

Roberto proceeded to recount Hermano Jorge's role on the civic committee steering the development of the new amusement park in Porlamar. Castagnelli's eyes twinkled at me while Roberto pressed on with the story of how Hermano Jorge, an engineer before taking his vows, had convinced the town to completely refasten the roller coaster at the amusement park which barely stood on its own anymore.

Engineer? The guy couldn't change his own engine's oil filter.

"Ay Diós! That roller coaster was raining rivets," protested the pious Ziggie, palms Godward. "Think what might have happened with a train full of little children. María Santísima!"

"Because of Hermano Jorge's good connections from his former life as an engineer we are able to get a very good deal on the new fasteners. And his negotiating skills saved us a lot of trouble with the contractor that did such a lousy job on that roller coaster. They were lucky they didn't go to jail!" Roberto gestured with his beer bottle at Castagnelli, toasting him with it, "We have the hand of God in this project, eh?"

We all downed our beers in salute. I spied pop eyed around my bottle at Ziggie whose own eyes glittered back at me frog-like through satisfied slits.

"Ziggie, what the hell?" I said, as soon as Roberto wandered off with the empties.

"Ah! You see? You didn't know me."

"But what the hell? Vows? Rivets? Engineer! Bullshit! You can't even change your own motor oil."

"I don't need to do that anymore. I'm a man of God now. Anyway, I lost my boat."

"Lost your boat? What the hell! How? Where?"

"Agh! Earthly treasures, my son, earthly treasures." Ziggie waved my questions aside with a practiced reverent gesture. I suspected that he had sold it, or perhaps the real owner had showed up, and he had had to run.

"Anyway", he continued, "I decided to make Venezuela my home. It's too good here. Too much opportunity." Ziggie's hands clutched at the air over the table. His eyes focused widely in the distance, contemplating the treasures of Aladdin.

"But one needs a motor boat to live here," he continued. "There's no wind for a sailboat. So I took the boat to Fort Lauderdale where I could trade it for a power boat. The bastards wouldn't give me a visa. I had to keep sailing out and coming back so they wouldn't arrest me. Anyway I got a terrific boat, a 38 foot Cigarette type boat with the same sort of registrations as mine! The Captain needed to get rid of his boat quick, and so did I. You see? It all works out."

"A drug boat. Marked from Florida to Tierra del Fuego. How did you think you would get it through customs? Did you ship it here?"

"Of course not! I crossed the Caribbean with it. Lots of day tanks. But you are right about one thing. It was a veritable parade with Coast Guard cutters and airplanes buzzing me the whole way."

"Good thing you weren't smuggling anything," I half stated and half asked.

Copyright 2011 Bruce Van Sant

Margarita Cat

"Not exactly." Ziggie played in embarrassment with the beer ring on the table in front of him. "You see, I discovered Home Depot. They had this sale on garage door openers. Have you seen a garage door opener? You know how they work?" Ziggie suddenly became animated. You could see that he loved the new garage door openers.

"I spent everything I had. I cleaned out their stock from the whole region. No room left below. I stayed on deck for the whole trip. Have you any idea of what a garage door opener sells for in Venezuela? If you can find one? I could have retired forever."

"So what happened, Ziggie?" I could sense it coming in the sag of his shoulders.

"The bastards! They got me just as I entered Mochima. I could have easily outrun them, but just as I turned to run I ran out of fuel. Shit!"

"You weren't arrested?"

"Of course! They took the boat. But there is no law against garage door openers. I fully intended to declare them of course."

"But of course, Ziggie."

"Anyway, the Guárdia kept the boat and the garage door openers, so they let me out of jail. They even gave me a Transiunte — the businessman's visa — it's good forever."

"And Hermano Jorge?" I reminded him.

"But one must have a business, no?"

"But Ziggie, you? A man of the cloth? What kind of cloth? Elastic asbestos?"

"I studied to be a priest, you know? Before that I was an altar boy. In Argentina." He squared his shoulders both patriotically and piously.

"Bullshit! How long did you study?"

"Well..." he played again in the beer ring. Suddenly Ziggie brightened.

"Did you know that now half the military equipment in this country uses automated garage door openers for their remote motors?" he asked with genuine pride.