Enrique

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When I was in Las Palmas, I met Enrique. He was standing over the railing, looking over at the boats in the marina, exactly where my favourite boat was docked. I went over and asked him if he knew anything about the boat. It was a very large sailboat, completely grey, and had the name UMBROS kind of rubbed out at the back. Enrique said the owner is Italian but he doesn’t know the design of the boat. Enrique said that he was 69 years old and he used to work as a German and Italian translator. He also spoke some French and English, so we spoke mainly French with bits of English and Spanish. He told me that he owned a sailboat once and on a trip to La Martinique in the Caribbean, it hit a container ship and sank but no one on board was hurt. He started to tell me his life story.

When he was 22, he worked on boats for shipping companies. Once, when they were in some port in the Mediterranean, he and two buddies drank too much and missed the boat. They contacted the company and the agent gave them money to fly to wherever the boat was, but they used the money for women and alcohol. The second time, the agent bought the plane tickets himself and saw them off at the airport. They got back on the boat in Rabat and the Captain said they had to pay as others had to do their work for 5 days. Another time, when the boat he was working on got to Lagos, Nigeria, they couldn’t get into port because there was a very long line up and they were anchored outside for 5 months. Pirates boarded the ship and the crew was told not to say a word. Enrique looked away when he saw the pirates and they hit him over the head and he passed out. Everyone on board was either “sleeping” or not looking and the pirates took whatever they wanted. Afterward, he and some other crew found their ship’s merchandise in the stores in Lagos. Once, when he was in Kobe, Japan, he had some opium and was lost to another world for 3 days. When he came to, he found that he had lost 4 kg because he hadn’t drunk or eaten in 3 days. He worked for one shipping company that was based in Hamburg so he lived there for 3 years.

In the 70’s when Greece had the dictatorship, all the “hippies” in Greece went to Ibiza and he went there as well. So there he was around 32, living in Ibiza, and running a restaurant, a cafe and a discotheque. He was also married to a German woman but they lived in separate apartments. When his wife was in Germany, he lived with a girl from the US (ah yes, the good ol’ hippie days). Her father was a Mormon minister. Her mother came and found out he was already married or that he was a hippie or that he wasn't Mormon, not sure which, and took her daughter back to the States. She then sent two rough looking men in black leather to threaten Enrique. They said that if he ever tries to contact the girl, they will kill him. He said, “ok, no problem” and offered them beers. They said no, they don’t drink because they’re Mormons. How funny is that! He loved it in Ibiza until it became a serious party and sex place so he left. He came to Las Palmas as there was also a hippie crowd here. They all camped and lived outside (there is still a bit of that in Grasiosa) but then it got too much and the law forbid it and everybody left.

His daughter was born in Lanzarote when he was living there at some point and running a discotheque. She moved to Boston with her mother, Enrique’s ex-wife, when she was 11 years old. Due to his Mormon experience, he has hated the US and has never been there, even though his daughter lives there.

He then worked for the marina and port authority. He said that he is retired now and lives on his pension. For the past 17 years, he has lived in a “caravan” which is a van that he has converted into a home, or a sailboat on wheels. He had outfitted it inside just like a sailboat. It had 2 water tanks of 125L each, a propane stove, a generator for the fridge and lights, a bunk bed and lots of storage space. Even the decor inside was like that in a sailboat. He could take a shower out the back of the van (with shower curtains). The van was really old but he has kept it in very good condition. He said that he has everything he needs and is very happy. His caravan is usually parked on the Muelle Deportivo and he gets his electricity and water from the pontoons on the docks. No one else is allowed to do this except him because they all know him here.

The most amazing thing about Enrique was that he’s had 8 cancers in the past 6 years. He said he still had hair after 5 chemotherapies but the last few were really strong so he lost his hair. He showed me a picture of himself after 5 chemotherapies: he had long blond hair and looked very healthy. The doctors actually ddin’t understand how he was still alive. He said that he was off chemotherapy and will go back for tests after some time. Because of all that chemotherapy, he looked like he had been burnt but from the inside: his skin was very blotchy and the melanin uneven, and underneath that was what burnt flesh would look like after it has healed. It’s very hard to describe how he looked. He had not told his daughter about his cancers and he doesn’t want her ever to know. The guest on our boat and I had a beer with Enrique at Sailor’s Bar one afternoon and she found it really cool that his phone’s ringtone was a hardcore Rolling Stone’s song.

<strong id="docs-internal-guid-4318ad6d-f19e-7ea7-94d6-9a90d3065f67" style="font-weight: normal;">I met up with Enrique 4 times altogether while I was in Las Palmas and the last time we met was to say farewell. He gave me his address and told me to write to him but only in Spanish. (He had a post office box.) I sent him a postcard from Guadeloupe and a letter from Toronto but received no reply.

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