Pirate Freedom

Gene Wolfe Pirate Freedom

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

-H. L. Mencken

Preface

We do not usually hear confessions, but I heard several by special appointment last Saturday. Tonight one man came to the rectory to ask whether I remembered his. I said that I did not.

'Then you've probably forgotten what you told me after you heard my confession, too.'

I shook my head. 'I recall that perfectly. I told you I'm a murderer myself.'

He looked a little stunned, and I invited him to sit down. 'The housekeeper's gone home,' I added, 'but I can make tea for you, or instant coffee.' I pointed to my glass. 'This's ice water, something I can never get enough of. We've lots of that, too.'

He said, 'I told you what I did.'

I nodded. 'I know you must have. I advise you not to repeat it.' '

I won't. I don't even want to. That felt so good! I shall owe you for that as long as I live.'

Of course I said that was nice and asked, politely, what he wanted.

'I want to know what you did.' He sighed, and grinned as soon as the sigh was finished. 'You don't have to tell me. I know that. You don't owe me anything. But…'

'Confession's good for the soul.'

'Right, Padre. It is. Besides, I very much want to know. I'll never tell anyone, and no one would believe me if I did. Will you? As a favor?'

'For my sake,' I said.

'Mine, too. I think it might help me.'

'And you told me, even though I've forgotten. I won't ask whether you'll forget this. I know the answer.'

The smart thing was for him just to wait, which is what he did.

'I was on a ship. A certain man there had insulted me. Over and over, and in a way that threatened to do a lot of harm.'

My visitor nodded.

'We had been in a big fight with some other people-he and I on the same side. There were a lot of other men on both sides. Fifty or so. And one woman on ours-I nearly forgot her. This man had a hammer in his belt, positioned so that he could pull it out with his right hand. He'd been using it as a weapon.'

'I'm most sorry, Padre. I shouldn't have asked.'

'It's okay.' Now it was my turn to sigh. 'This is only one instance. There are a good many others, I'm afraid, depending on just how God judges these things.'

I sipped my water while I pulled myself together. 'This man I spoke of- the man who had insulted me-came up to shake hands with me when the fight was over. I'd been using an oak bar with an iron tip as a weapon. It was about this long.'

I showed it the way fishermen show the length of a fish, and my visitor nodded.

'Four and half feet, maybe. Maybe five. About that. It would have been heavy even without the iron tip, but the tip brought its weight toward that end. You know what I mean?'

'He wanted to shake your hand,' my visitor said.

'Yes. Yes, he did. Everyone was shaking hands with me then, and he wanted to be one of them. I accepted his hand and held it so he couldn't get to his hammer, and I swung the bar I had been leaning on overhand with my left hand.'

'I see…'

'When he was lying unconscious on the deck, I hit him again, harder, swinging the handspike with both arms. I've never been quite sure why I did that, but I did. A friend of mine picked up his feet, and I picked up his shoulders. His head was a mess-I remember that. Together, we threw him over the gunwale into the sea.'

My visitor had a great many questions after that, but I answered hardly any, just telling him over and over that the answers were too complicated to explain unless we sat up all night. I did not add-although I could have-that he would not have believed me. Finally I promised I would write everything out and mail it to him when it could do no more harm.

Now I am going to take a long walk and do a lot of thinking. When I return to the rectory, I will begin.

1 The Monastery

Sometimes it seems that I spend most of my time trying to explain things to people who do not want to understand. This may be more of that. My evenings are free once I have locked up the Youth Center. Maybe I should have written semi-free. I read whenever I can, the lives of good and decent men and women who sought God and found Him.

I am not like that-either I have never lost Him or I have never sought Him. When you read this, you can say which. I have already confessed many times, but I think someone ought to tell my story. I am no autobiographer, just the only one who knows it.

I was ten, I think, when my father and I moved to Cuba. The communists had lost power, and my father was going to run a casino in Havana. Some monks had reopened an old monastery outside the city, and they were trying to start a boarding school. After a few years, my father signed me up. I think he must have given the monastery fifty thousand or so, because nothing was said about payment in all the years I was there-nothing I remember.

A year seems like a lifetime at that age, so three or maybe four lifetimes passed before I went from being a student to being a novice in the order. You would think I would remember something like that better than I do. All that I recall is that the Novice Master called us together one day and explained that the abbot had given up the idea of a school. The parents who did not want their sons to enter the order would come and take them home.

Most of my friends left after that. My father did not come, so I became a novice.

I see I have gotten ahead of myself, which happens a lot whenever I try to talk in public. I should tell you first that up to then I had gone home for holidays. Not all of them but some, like Christmas, and for eight weeks in the summer, every summer until then.

After that, my father never came for me again. I talked to my confessor about it, and he explained that being a novice was different. My father could not come anymore. He could have written letters, but he never did.

It was still like going to school. I helped Brother Ignacio herd our pigs and weed the garden, and there were novenas and mass and vespers and whatnot. But we had always done those. We still had classes and grades and all that. Now I know the subjects we studied were just the ones various monks could teach, but they knew a lot and it was a pretty good education. Most of them were from Mexico and most of the kids from Cuba, so we spoke