Pirate Freedom

by Gene Wolfe

The hero is named Christopher (Chris, Crisóforo, Christophe). He recounts his childhood and career as a pirate, interspersed with digressions about events in his later life, including the time when he is writing the book (as in The Book of the Short Sun). The following summarizes his story in the order in which he experiences it.

Chris is a Sicilian-American. When he is ten, Communism ends in Cuba, and his father (apparently a "wiseguy") moves there with him to run a casino. Chris goes to school at a monastery, where he becomes a novice and helps a Brother Ignacio with the farm work. At one point, he notices that many of the people he knew are gone, Mass is in Latin, and no one wears a watch. Somewhat later, he walks away from the monastery.

A farmer in a horse-drawn wagon picks him up and takes him to Havana—but the roads are unpaved and Havana is much smaller than he remembers. Chris lives by theft until he signs on to a Spanish brig bound for Veracruz, Mexico. He is raped twice by shipmates, but thereafter manages to avoid them, and he enjoys learning military seamanship.

In Veracruz he meets an English captain, Abraham Burt. Then Chris's ship sails to Spain, where he becomes infatuated with Estrellita, the maid of a wealthy young married woman. Her master puts a stop to the relationship.

He returns to his ship, but on the way back to Mexico they are captured by English pirates under Captain Burt, who takes him on to the pirate ship. They capture a Spanish slave ship, and Burt puts Chris in charge of taking it to Port Royal. When he returns, having freed a few of the slaves, he refuses to join in piracy and Burt abandons him on Hispaniola.

There a French buccaneer (a settler in the wilderness) helps him survive. They and other buccaneers capture a small Spanish warship sent against them, and Chris assumes command. A "boy" on the ship reveals herself as a woman who Chris knew in Spain; Chris takes her to be the maid Estrellita, but calls her "Novia", meaning "sweetheart". They become lovers.

After fights against the Spanish, Chris and his crew meet with Burt. An allied ship has captured a Spanish galley and its owner. The passengers had included one Jaime Guzmán and his wife. Chris deduces Señora Guzmán's hiding place and finds that she is Estrellita; Novia is Guzmán's real wife and Estrellita's former mistress. Guzmán had beaten Novia because—she says—she too was in love with Chris. Though Chris is angry with Novia for lying to him, she still loves him and they reconcile.

Chris rejoins Burt, and their fleet engages in successful and unsuccessful piracy, sailing around South America. At Río Hato, Panama, they rob a mule train of Peruvian gold. That night one crew massacres the rest of the pirates and takes the gold. Chris escapes and finds the dying Burt, who gives him his maps to the treasure he has buried on the Pearl Islands.

Chris and Novia marry in Veracruz. Chris runs into Brother Ignacio and hires him to take care of Novia while Chris reclaims Burt's treasure. He sets out single-handed, but is wrecked and on the last page of the book is rescued by Mexican fishermen who have a radio.

He makes his way to the United States and enters a seminary, then becomes a priest. He resists the temptation to visit the home where his child self lives. The Cuban Communists fall, and Chris heads to Cuba. He has realized Brother Ignacio was his older self. Finishing his manuscript on a plane to Miami, he explains that he plans to enter his childhood monastery as a lay brother named Ignacio, follow young Chris out of the monastery into 17th-century Cuba, go to Veracruz to meet him and take care of Novia, and eventually take his place as her husband and recover Burt's treasure.