Islands in the Stream (29 page)

“You have been a very naughty boy,” the Baron had said. “Very naughty indeed.”

“Do you want some more
moules
?”

“No. I want something solid.”

“Shouldn’t we have a
bouillabaisse
, too?”

“Two soups?”

“I’m hungry. And we won’t be here again for a long time.”

“I should think you might be hungry. Good. We’ll have a
bouillabaisse
and then a good
Ch
â
teaubriand
very rare. I’ll build you up, you bastard.’”

“What are you going to do?”

“The question is what are you going to do. Do you love her?”

“No.”

“That’s much better. It is better for you to leave now. Much better.”

“I promised to spend some time with them for the fishing.”

“If it were the shooting it might be worthwhile,” the Baron had said. “The fishing is very cold and very unpleasant and she has no business to make a fool of her husband.”

“He must know about it.”

“He does not. He knows she is in love with you. That is all. You are a gentleman so whatever you do is all right. But she has no business to make a fool of her husband. You wouldn’t marry her, would you?”

“No.”

“She couldn’t marry you anyway and there is no need that he should be made unhappy unless you are in love with her.”

“I’m not. I know that now.”

“Then I think you should get out.”

“I’m quite sure that I should.”

“I’m so glad that you agree. Now tell me truly, how is she?”

“She’s very well.”

“Don’t be silly. I knew her mother. You should have known her mother.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t.”

“You should be. I don’t know how you got yourself mixed up with such good dull people. You don’t need her for your painting or anything like that, do you?”

“No. That’s not the way it’s done. I like her very much. I still like her. But I’m not in love with her and it’s getting very complicated.”

“I’m so glad that you agree. Now where do you think that you will go?”

“We’ve just come from Africa.”

“Exactly. Why don’t you go to Cuba for a while or the Bahamas? I could join you if I get hold of any money at home.”

“Do you think you will get any money at home?”

“No.”

“I think I will stay in Paris for a while. I’ve been away from town for a long time.”

“Paris isn’t town. London is town.”

“I’d like to see what’s going on in Paris.”

“I can tell you what’s going on.”

“No. I mean I want to see the pictures and some people and go to the Six-Day and Auteuil and Enghien and Le Tremblay. Why don’t you stay?”

“I don’t like racing and I can’t afford to gamble.”

And why go on with that? he thought now. The Baron was dead and the Krauts had Paris and the Princess did not have a baby. There would be no blood of his in any royal house, he thought, unless he had a nosebleed sometime in Buckingham Palace, which seemed extremely unlikely. If one of those boys did not come in twenty minutes, he decided, he would go down into the village and get some eggs and some bread. It is a hell of a thing to be hungry in your own house, he thought. But I’m too damned tired to go down there.

Just then he heard someone in the kitchen and he pushed the buzzer that was set in the underside of the big table and heard it burr twice in the kitchen.

The second houseboy came in with his faintly fairy, half Saint Sebastian, sly, crafty, and long-suffering look and said, “You rang?”

“What the hell do you think I did? Where is Mario?”

“He went for the mail.”

“How are all the cats?”

“Very well. Without news. Big Goats fought with El Gordo. But we treated the wounds.”

“Boise looks thin.”

“He goes out much at night.”

“How is Princessa?”

“She was a little sad. But she eats well now.”

“Did you have difficulty getting meat?”

“We got it from Cotorro.”

“How are the dogs?”

“All of them are well. Negrita is with puppies again.”

“Couldn’t you keep her shut up?”

“We tried but she escaped.”

“Has anything else happened?”

“Nothing. How was the voyage?”

“Without incident.”

As he talked, irritated and short as always with this boy who he had let go twice but had taken back each time when his father had come and pled for him, Mario, the first houseboy, came in carrying the papers and the mail. He was smiling and his brown face was gay and kind and loving.

“How was the voyage?”

“A little rough at the end.”

“
Figúrate
. Imagine it. It’s a big norther. Have you eaten?”

“There’s nothing to eat.”

“I brought eggs and the milk and bread.
Tú
,” he said to the second houseboy. “Go in and prepare the caballero’s breakfast. How do you want the eggs?”

“As usual.”

“
Los huevos como siempre
,” Mario said.
“Was Boise there to meet you?”

“Yes.”

“He has suffered very much this time. More than ever.”

“And the others?”

“Only one bad fight between Goats and Fats.” He used the English names proudly. “The Princessa was a little sad. But it was nothing.”

“¿Y tú?”

“Me?” He smiled shyly and very pleased. “Very well. Thank you very much.”

“And the family?”

“All very well, thank you. Papa is working again.”

“I am glad.”

“He is, too. Did none of the other gentlemen sleep here?”

“No, They all went into town.”

“They must be tired.”

“They are.”

“There were calls from various friends. I have them all written down. I hope you can recognize them. I can do nothing with the English names.”

“Write them as they sound.”

“But they do not sound the same to me as to you.”

“Did the Colonel call?”

“No sir.”

“Bring me a whisky with mineral water,” Thomas Hudson said. “And bring milk for the cats, please.”

“In the dining room or here?”

“The whisky here. The milk for the cats in the dining room.”

“Instantly,” Mario said. He went to the kitchen and came back with a whisky and mineral water. “I think it is strong enough,” he said.

Should I shave now or wait until after breakfast? Thomas Hudson thought. I ought to shave. That’s what I ordered the whisky for, to get me through the shaving. All right, go in and shave then. The hell with it, he thought. No. Go in and do it. It’s good for your damned morale and you have to go into town after breakfast.

Shaving, he sipped the drink halfway through lathering, after lathering, and during the process of relathering, and changing blades three times in getting the two-week stubble off his cheeks, chin, and throat. The cat walked around and watched him while he shaved and rubbed against his legs. Then suddenly he bounded out of the room and Thomas Hudson knew he had heard the milk bowls being put down on the tiled floor of the dining room. He had not heard the click himself nor had he heard any calling. But Boise had heard it.

Thomas Hudson finished shaving and poured his right hand full of the wonderful ninety-degree pure alcohol that was as cheap in Cuba as miserable rubbing alcohol in the States and doused it over his face, feeling its cold bite take away the soreness from the shaving.

I don’t use sugar, nor smoke tobacco, he thought, but by God I get my pleasure out of what they distill in this country.

The lower parts of the bathroom windows were painted over because the stone paved patio ran all around the house, but the upper halves of the windows were of clear glass and he could see the branches of the palm trees whipping in the wind. She’s blowing even heavier than I thought. There would almost be time to haul out. But you can’t tell. It all depends on what she does when she goes into the northeast. It certainly had been fun not to think about the sea for the last few hours. Let’s keep it up, he thought. Let’s not think about the sea nor what is on it or under it, or anything connected with it. Let’s not even make a list of what we will not think of about it. Let’s not think of it at all. Let’s just have the sea in being and leave it at that. And the other things, he thought. We won’t think about them either.

“Where would the señor like to have breakfast?” Mario asked.

“Any place away from the
puta
sea.”

“In the living room or in the señor’s bedroom?”

“In the bedroom. Pull out the wicker chair and put the breakfast on a table by it.”

He drank the hot tea and ate a fried egg and some toast with orange marmalade.

“Is there no fruit?”

“Only bananas.”

“Bring some.”

“Are they not bad with alcohol?”

“That is superstition.”

“But while you were away a man died in the village from eating bananas when he was drinking rum.”

“How do you know he wasn’t just a banana-eating rummy who died from rum?”

“No, señor. This man died very suddenly from drinking a small amount of rum after eating a large quantity of bananas. They were his own bananas from his garden. He lived on the hill behind the village and worked for the route number seven of the buses.”

“May he rest in peace,” Thomas Hudson said. “Bring me a few bananas.”

Mario brought the bananas, small, yellow, ripe, from the tree in the garden. They were hardly bigger, peeled, than a man’s fingers and they were delicious. Thomas Hudson ate five of them.

“Observe me for symptoms,” he said. “And bring the Princessa to eat the other egg.”

“I gave her an egg to celebrate your return,” the boy said. “I also gave an egg to Boise and to Willy.”

“What about Goats?”

“The gardener said it was not good for Goats to eat much until his wounds are healed. His wounds were severe.”

“What sort of a fight was it?”

“It was very serious. They fought for nearly a mile. We lost them in the thorn brush beyond the garden. They fought with no noise at all; the way they fight now. I don’t know who won. Big Goats came in first and we took care of his wounds. He came to the patio and lay beside the cistern. He couldn’t jump to the top of it. Fats came in an hour later and we cared for his wounds.”

“Do you remember how loving they were when they were brothers?”

“Of course. But I am afraid now that Fats will kill Goats. He must weigh nearly a pound more.”

“Goats is a great fighting cat.”

“Yes, señor. But figure out for yourself what a full pound means.”

“I don’t think it can mean as much in cats as it does in fighting cocks. You think of everything in terms of fighting chickens. It doesn’t mean much in men unless one man must weaken himself to make the weight. Jack Dempsey weighed only 185 pounds when he won the championship of the world. Willard weighed 230. Goats and Fats are both big cats.”

“The way they fight, a pound is a terrible advantage,” Mario said. “If they were being fought for money, no one would give away a pound. They would not give away ounces.”

“Bring me some more bananas.”

“Please, señor.”

“You really believe that nonsense?”

“It’s not nonsense, señor.”

“Then bring me another whisky and mineral water.”

“If you order me to.”

“I ask you to.”

“If you ask, it is an order.”

“Then bring it.”

The boy brought in the whisky with ice and cold, charged mineral water and Thomas Hudson took it and said, “Observe me for symptoms.” But the worried look on the boy’s dark face made him tire of the teasing and he said, “Truly, I know it will not make me sick.”

“The señor knows what he is doing. But it was my duty to protest.”

“That’s all right. You’ve protested. Has Pedro come yet?”

“No, señor.”

“When he comes tell him to have the Cadillac ready to go to town at once.”

Now you take a bath, Thomas Hudson said to himself. Then you dress for Havana. Then you ride into town to see the Colonel. What the hell is wrong with you? Plenty is wrong with me, he thought. Plenty. The land of plenty. The sea of plenty. The air of plenty.

He sat in a wicker chair with his feet up on the extension that pulled out from under the seat and looked at the pictures on the wall of his bedroom. At the head of the bed, the cheap bed with the no-good mattress that had been bought as an economy because he never slept in it except in case of quarrels, there was Juan Gris’s
Guitar Player
.
Nostalgia hecha hombre
, he thought in Spanish. People did not know that you died of it. Across the room, above the bookcase, was Paul Klee’s
Monument in Arbeit
. He didn’t love it as he loved the
Guitar Player
but he loved to look at it and he remembered how corrupt it had seemed when he first bought it in Berlin. The color was as indecent as the plates in his father’s medical books that showed the different types of chancres and venereal ulcers, and how frightened of it his wife had been until she had learned to accept its corruption and only see it as a painting. He knew no more about it now than when he first saw it in Flechtheim’s Gallery in the house by the river that wonderful cold fall in Berlin when they had been so happy. But it was a good picture and he liked to look at it.

Above the other bookcase was one of Masson’s forests. This was Ville d’Avray and he loved it the way he loved the
Guitar Player
. That was the great thing about pictures; you could love them with no hopelessness at all. You could love them without sorrow and the good ones made you happy because they had done what you always tried to do. So it was done and it was all right, even if you failed to do it.

Boise came into the room and jumped up onto his lap. He jumped beautifully and could leap, without effort showing, to the top of the high chest of drawers in the big bedroom. Now, having leaped moderately and neatly, he settled down on Thomas Hudson’s lap and made loving pushes with his forepaws.

“I’m looking at the pictures, Boy. You’d be better off if you liked pictures.”

Who knows though but he may get as much from leaping and from night hunting as I get from the pictures, Thomas Hudson thought. It is a damned shame he can’t see them though. You can’t tell. He might have frightful taste in pictures.