Abundance reigned equally between bridge and forecastle where were the sailors' quarters and the galley,—the space respected by every one on the boat as the incontestable realm of Uncle Caragol.
This old man, nicknamed "Caracol" (snail), another old friend of Ferragut's, was the ship's cook, and, although he did not dare to talk as familiarly to the captain as in former times, the tone of his voice made it understood that mentally he was continuing to use the old, affectionate form. He had known Ulysses when he used to run away from the classrooms to row in the harbor and, on account of the bad state of his eyes, he had finally retired from the navigation of coast vessels, descending to be a simple bargeman. His gravity and corpulence had something almost priestly in character. He was the obese type of Mediterranean with a little head, voluminous neck and triple chin, seated on the stern of his fishing skiff like a Roman patrician on the throne of his trireme.
His culinary talent suffered eclipse whenever rice did not figure as the fundamental basis of his compositions. All that this food could give of itself, he knew perfectly. In the tropical ports, the crews surfeited with bananas, pineapples, and alligator-pears, would greet with enthusiasm the apparition of a great frying pan of rice with cod and potatoes, or a casserole of rice from the oven with its golden crust perforated by the ruddy faces of garbanzos and points of black sausage. At other times, under the leaden-colored sky of the northern seas, the cook made them recall their distant native land by giving them the monastic rice dish with beet roots, or buttery rice with turnips and beans.
On Sundays and the fiestas of the Valencian saints who for Uncle Caragol were the first in heaven,—San Vicente Mártir, San Vicente Ferrer, La Virgin de los Desamparados and the Cristo del Grao—would appear the smoking paella, a vast, circular dish of rice upon whose surface of white, swollen grains were lying bits of various fowls. The cook loved to surprise his following by distributing rotund, raw onions, with the whiteness of marble and an acrid surprise that brought tears to the eyes. They were a princely gift maintained in secret. One had only to break them with one blow and their sticky juices would gush forth and lose themselves in the palate like crisp mouthfuls of a sweet and spicy bread, alternating with knifefuls of rice. The boat was at times near Brazil in sight of Fernando de Noroña,—yet even while viewing the conical huts of the negroes installed on an island under an equatorial sun, the crews could almost believe—thanks to Uncle Caragol's magic—that they were eating in a cabin of the farmland of Valencia, as they passed from hand to hand the long-spouted jug filled with strong wine from Liria.
When they anchored in ports where fish was abundant, he achieved the great work of cooking a rice abanda. The cabin boys would bring to the captain's table the pot in which was boiled the rich sea food mixed with lobsters, mussels, and every kind of shell-fish available, but the chef invariably reserved for himself the honor of offering the accompanying great platter with its pyramid, of rice, every grain golden and distinct.
Boiled apart (abanda) each grain was full of the succulent broth of the stew-pot. It was a rice dish that contained within it the concentration of all the sustenance of the sea. As though he were performing a liturgical ceremony, the chef would go around delivering half a lemon to each one of those seated at the table. The rice should only be eaten after moistening it with this perfumed dew which called to mind the image of an oriental garden. Only the unfortunate beings who lived inland were ignorant of this exquisite confection, calling any mess of rice a Valencian rice dish.
Ulysses would humor the cook's notions, carrying the first spoonful to his mouth with a questioning glance…. Then he would smile, giving himself up to gastric intoxication. "Magnificent, Uncle Caragol!" His good humor made him affirm that only the gods should be nourished with rice abanda in their abodes on Mount Olympus. He had read that in books. And Caragol, divining great praise in all this, would gravely reply, "That is so, my captain." Toni and the other officers by this time would be chewing away with heads down, only interrupting their feast to regret that the old Ganymede should have skimped them when measuring the ambrosia.
In his estimation, oil was as precious as rice. In the time of their money-losing navigation, when the captain was making special efforts at economy, Caragol used to keep an especially sharp eye on the great oil bottles in his galley, for he suspected that the cabin boys and the young seamen appropriated it to dress their hair when they wanted to play the dandy, using the oil as a pomade. Every head that put itself within reach of his disturbed glance he grasped between his arms, raising it to his nose. The slightest perfume of olive oil would arouse his wrath. "Ah, you thief!"… And down would fall his enormous hand, soft and heavy as a fencing gauntlet.
Ulysses believed him quite capable of climbing the bridge, and declaring that navigation could not go on because of his having exhausted the leathern bottles of amethyst-colored liquid proceeding from the Sierra de Espadán.
In the ports, his short-sighted eyes recognized immediately the nationality of the boats anchored on both sides of the Mare Nostrum. His nose would sniff the air sadly. "Nothing!…" They were unsavory barks, barks from the North that prepared their dinner with lard or butter,—Protestant barks, perhaps.
Sometimes he would sneak along the gunwale, following an intoxicating trail until he planted himself in front of the galley of the neighboring boat, breathing in its rich perfume. "Hello, brothers!" Impossible to fool him, they were probably Spaniards and, if not, they were from Genoa or Naples,—in short, were compatriots accustomed to live and eat in all latitudes just as though they were in their own little inland sea. Soon they would begin a speech in the Mediterranean idiom, a mixture of Spanish, Provençal and Italian, invented by the hybrid peoples of the African coast from Egypt to Morocco. Sometimes they would send each other presents, like those that are exchanged between tribes,—fruits from distant countries. At other times, suddenly inimical, without knowing why, they would shake their fists over the railing, yelling insults at each other in which, between every two or three words, would appear the names of the Virgin and her holy Son.
This was the signal for Uncle Caragol, religious soul, to return in haughty silence to his galley. Toni, the mate, used to make fun of his devout enthusiasm. On the other hand, the foremast hands, materialistic and gluttonous, used to listen to him with deference, because he was the one who doled out the wine and the choicest tid-bits. The old man used to speak to them of the Cristo del Grao, whose pictures occupied the most prominent site in the kitchen, and they would all listen as to a new tale, to the story of the arrival by sea of the sacred image, mounted upon a ladder in a boat that had dissolved in smoke after discharging its miraculous cargo.
This had been when the Grao was no more than a group of huts far from the walls of Valencia and threatened by the raids of the Moorish pirates. For many years Caragol, barefooted, had carried this sacred ladder on his shoulder on the day of the fiesta. Now other men of the sea were enjoying such honor and he, old and half-blind, would be waiting among the public for the procession to pass in order that he might throw himself upon the enormous relic, touching his clothes to the wood.