Planus by Blaise Cendrars Page B

quarter-circles, the lips of a vagina, an erect shaft, and then I dug a hole with my wand, a little funnel-shaped hollow that collapsed when I kicked it. There was that sound like knucklebones all along the beach when the waves sucked back. Time passed. I ate, I smoked, I drank and gazed out at the open sea. Out there, the sea was empty, making a dark ridge. I drank. The wine of Pozzuoli is good. I drank again and started to draw new patterns in the sand, effaced them at once, and drank some more of the thick, black wine like printers' ink. What was the use of writing, everything was printed within me, and perhaps pure poetry was letting oneself become impregnated with the signature of things, and deciphering it within oneself. The sea and poetry. Poetry and death. Ach, the hell with it! I smoked. I drank.
    'Hey, you there!'
    The sun was sinking.
    Someone challenged me.
    'Hey, that man there ! Yes, you. . . .'
    I did not move.
    For some time already I had been keeping an eye on the manoeuvrings of a man who was standing in the stern of a dinghy that had been lowered from the boat riding heavily in the outer harbour. The mainmast was tilted well forward, the mainsail braced on a sprit which projected a long way behind the stern, pointed so as to facilitate hauling out with a tow-line in those narrow channels where smugglers nearly always load; I would have guessed it to be a boat from the Archipelago, and the man rowing towards me looked like a Greek sailor, with his long, flowing, floss-silk cap.
    'Hey, you there!' he shouted.
    But I did not answer.
    Then he ran aground, jumped into the water, hauled up his dinghy, threw the anchor on to the sand and came running up to
    me.
    I still did not answer him, but pushed the fiasco of wine towards him. He swallowed a long draught without touching the bottle with his lips, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, put the flask back on the table, pushing it towards me, swatted a fly, grinned and said : 'It's good, but not as good as our Samos wine. I am Papadakis from Samos, everyone knows me, come aboard. ..
    He was a fat man, short, hairy, with curly moustachios, raven- black hair, a ring in his left ear, a proud eye, scowling eyebrows, dazzling teeth, a dimple in his chin, hands folded into fists (hands that were broader than they were long), small feet, broad toes, plump ankles, drill trousers rolled up to mid-thigh, the calves, knees and thighs seeming to form a solid mass without joints, his full-breasted torso encased in a kind of woollen wadding, brown and seamless like felt, and in that lingua franca composed of Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, Italian idioms and gallicisms which is spoken by all the sailors on the Levant, he volubly explained the situation, with ringing Greek declensions at the end of every sentence as if he were reciting a poem.
    I was able to understand that he had come from Samos with a cargo of wine, and it had taken him two months, crawling from cape to cape because there was no wind, and that his crew had left him, either because they drank too much or because he put them ashore, three days ago; that he was once more becalmed, but was trying to make up another crew so that he could take advantage of the breeze that was getting up and set sail without further loss of time; he had taken on a Bulgarian, which made two with the ship's boy, his nephew, but he must have at least one more man, and it was difficult to find anybody in this deserted spot, but, at a pinch, he could make do with me.
    'Embark with us, man, and you'll see,' he said.
    I got up without saying anything and walked towards the longboat with my cane in my hand. The owner of the boat called the owner of the bar and settled my bill; they carried on a little confabulation and then the Greek started running after me and laughing.
    I had already pushed the dinghy into the water and held it by the bow while Papadakis settled himself cheerfully on the thwart, holding on his knees some cob loaves which