Islands in the Stream (37 page)

“But how did they look so beautiful in the morning if they had coiffures
muy estilizado
such as Chinese women wear? The more
estilizado
the hairdress, the worse they would look in the morning after a night like that.”

“They didn’t have such coiffures. They wore their hair shoulder length the way American girls did that year and the way many still do. It was curled, too, very softly. That was the way C.W. liked them. He had been in America and, naturally, he had seen the cinema.”

“Did you never have them again?”

“Only one at a time. C.W. would send me over one at a time as a present. But he never sent all three. They were new and naturally he wanted them for himself. And, too, he said he did not want to do anything that was bad for my morals.”

“He sounds like a fine man. What happened to him?”

“I believe he was shot.”

“Poor man. That was a nice story though and very delicate for a story like that. You seem more cheerful, too.”

I guess I am, Thomas Hudson thought. Well, that is what I set out to be. Or was it?

“Look, Lil,” he said. “Don’t you think we’ve drunk maybe just about enough of these?”

“How do you feel?”

“Better.”

“Make Tomás another double frozen without sugar. I’m getting a little drunk. I don’t want anything.”

I do feel better, Thomas Hudson thought. That is the funny part. You always feel better and you always get over your remorse. There’s only one thing you don’t get over and that is death.

“You ever been dead?” he said to Lil.

“Of course not.”

“Yo tampoco.”

“Why did you say that? You scare me when you talk like that.”

“I don’t mean to scare you, honey. I don’t want to scare anybody ever.”

“I like it when you call me honey.”

This isn’t getting anywhere, Thomas Hudson thought. Isn’t there anything else you could do that would produce the same effect rather than sit with beat-up old Honest Lil in La Floridita at the old tarts’ end of the bar and get drunk? If you only have four days couldn’t you employ them better? Where?, he thought. At Alfred’s Sin House? You’re doing all right where you are. The drinking couldn’t be any better, nor as good, anywhere in the world and you’re down to the drinking now, kid, and you better get just as far in it as you can. That’s what you’ve got now and you better like it and like it on all frequencies. You know you always liked it and you loved it and it’s what you have now, so you better love it.

“I love it,” he said out loud.

“What?”

“Drinking. Not just drinking. Drinking these double frozens without sugar. If you drank that many with sugar it would make you sick.”

“
Ya lo creo
. And if anybody else drank that many without sugar they’d be dead.”

“Maybe I’ll be dead.”

“No, you won’t. You’ll just break the record and then we’ll go to my place and you’ll go to sleep and the worst thing that will happen is if you snore.”

“Did I snore last time?”

“
Horrores
. And you called me by about ten different names in the night.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No. I thought it was funny. I learned two or three things I didn’t know. Don’t your other girls ever get upset when you call them by so many different names?”

“I haven’t any other girls. Just a wife.”

“I try hard to like her and think well of her but it is very difficult. Naturally I never let anyone speak against her.”

“I’ll speak against her.”

“No. Don’t. That is vulgar. I hate two things. Men when they cry. I know they have to cry. But I don’t like it. And I hate to hear them speak against their wives. Yet they nearly all do. So don’t you do it, because we are having such a lovely time.”

“Good. The hell with her. We won’t speak about her.”

“Please, Tom. You know I think she is very beautiful.
She is. Really.
Pero no es mujer para ti.
But let us not speak against her.”

“Right.”

“Tell me another happy story. It doesn’t even have to have love in it if it makes you happy to tell it.”

“I don’t think I know any happy stories.”

“Don’t be like that. You know thousands. Take another drink and tell me a happy story.”

“Why don’t you do some of the work?”

“What work?”

“The goddamned morale building.”

“Tú tienes la moral muy baja.”

“Sure. I’m well aware of it. But why don’t you tell a few stories to build it up?”

“You have to do it yourself. You know that. I’ll do anything else you want me to. You know that.”

“OK,” Thomas Hudson said. “You really want another happy story?”

“Please. There’s your drink. One more happy story and one more drink and you’ll feel good.”

“You guarantee it?”

“No,” she said and she began to cry again as she looked up at him, crying easily and naturally as water wells up in a spring. “Tom, why can’t you tell me what’s the matter? I’m afraid to ask now. Is that it?”

“That’s it,” Thomas Hudson said. Then she began to cry hard and he had to put his arm around her and try to comfort her with all of the people there at the bar. She was not crying beautifully now. She was crying straight and destructively.

“Oh my poor Tom,” she said. “Oh my poor Tom.”

“Pull yourself together,
mujer
, and drink a brandy. Now we are going to be cheerful.”

“Oh, I don’t want to be cheerful now. I’ll never be cheerful again.”

“Look,” Thomas Hudson said. “You see how much good it does to tell people things?”

“I’ll be cheerful,” she said. “Just give me a minute. I’ll go out to the ladies and I’ll be all right.”

You damned well better be, Thomas Hudson thought. Because I’m feeling really bad and if you don’t quit crying, or if you talk about it, I’ll pull the hell out of here. And if I pull the hell out of here where the hell else have I got to go? He was aware of the limitations, and no one’s Sin House was the answer.

“Give me another double frozen daiquiri without sugar.
No sé lo que pasa con esta mujer
.”

“She cries like a sprinkling can,” the barman said. “They ought to have her instead of the aqueduct.”

“How’s the aqueduct coming?” Thomas Hudson asked.

The man next to him on his left at the bar, a short, cheerful-faced man with a broken nose whose face he knew well but whose name and whose politics escaped him said, “Those
cabrones
. They can always get money for water since water is the one great necessity. Everything else is necessary. But water there is no substitute for and you cannot do without some water. So they can always get money to bring water. So there will never be a proper aqueduct.”

“I’m not sure I follow you completely.”

“
Sí
,
hombre
. They can always get money for an aqueduct because an aqueduct is absolutely necessary. Therefore they cannot afford an aqueduct. Would you kill the goose that lays the golden aqueduct?”

“Why not build the aqueduct and make some money out of it and find another
truco
?”

“There’s no trick like water. You can always get money for the promise to produce water. No politician would destroy a
truco
like that by building an adequate aqueduct. Aspirant politicians occasionally shoot one another in the lowest levels of politics. But no politician would so strike at the true basis of political economy. Let me propose a toast to the Custom House, a lottery racket, the free numbers racket, the fixed price of sugar, and the eternal lack of an aqueduct.”

“Prosit,”
Thomas Hudson said.

“You’re not German, are you?”

“No. American.”

“Then let us drink to Roosevelt, Churchill, Batista, and the lack of an aqueduct.”

“To Stalin.”

“Certainly. To Stalin, Central Hershey, marijuana, and the lack of an aqueduct.”

“To Adolphe Luque.”

“To Adolph Luque, to Adolf Hitler, to Philadelphia, to Gene Tunney, to Key West, and to the lack of an aqueduct.”

Honest Lil came in to the bar from the ladies room while they were talking. She had repaired her face and she was not crying but you could see she had been hit.

“Do you know this gentleman?” Thomas Hudson said to her, introducing his new friend, or his old friend newly found.

“Only in bed,” the gentleman said.

“Cállate,”
Honest Lil said. “He’s a politician,” she explained to Thomas Hudson,
“Muy hambriento en este momento.”

“Thirsty,” the politician corrected. “And at your orders,” he said to Thomas Hudson. “What will you have?”

“A double frozen daiquiri without sugar. Should we roll for them?”

“No, Let me buy them. I have unlimited credit here.”

“He’s a good man,” Honest Lil said to Thomas Hudson in a whisper while the other was attracting the attention of the nearest barman. “A politician. But very honest and very cheerful.”

The man put his arm around Lil. “You’re thinner every day,
mi vida
,” he said. “We must belong to the same political party.”

“To the aqueduct,” Thomas Hudson said,

“My God, no. What are you trying to do? Take the bread out of our mouths and put water in?”

“Let’s drink to when the
puta guerra
will finish,” Lil said,

“Drink.”

“To the black market,” the man said. “To the cement shortage. To those who control the supply of black beans.”

“Drink,” Thomas Hudson said and added, “To rice.”

“To rice,” the politician said. “Drink.”

“Do you feel better?” Honest Lil asked.

“Sure.”

He looked at her and saw she was going to start to cry again.

“You cry again,” he said, “and I’ll break your jaw.”

There was a lithographed poster behind the bar of a politician in white suit and the slogan
“Un Alcalde Mejor,”
a better mayor. It was a big poster and the better mayor stared straight into the eyes of every drinker.

“To
Un Alcalde Peor
,” the politician said. “To A Worse Mayor.”

“Will you run?” Thomas Hudson asked him.

“Absolutely.”

“That’s wonderful,” Honest Lil said. “Let’s draw up our platform.”

“It isn’t difficult,” the candidate said. “
Un Alcalde Peor
. We’ve got a winning slogan. What do we need a platform for?”

“We ought to have a platform,” Lil said. “Don’t you think so, Tomás?”

“I think so. What about Down with the Rural Schools?”

“Down,” said the candidate.

“Menos guaguas y peores,”
Honest Lil suggested.

“Good. Fewer and worse buses.”

“Why not do away with transport entirely?” suggested the candidate.
“Es más sencillo.”

“Okay,” Thomas Hudson said.
“Cero transporte.”

“Short and noble,” the candidate said. “And it shows we are impartial. But we could elaborate it. What about
Cero transporte aéreo
,
terrestre
,
y marítimo?”

“Wonderful. We’re getting a real platform. How do we stand on leprosy?”

“Por una lepra más grande para Cuba,”
said the candidate.

“Por el cáncer cubano,”
Thomas Hudson said.

“Por una tuberculosis ampliada, adecuada, y permanente para Cuba y los cubanos,”
said the candidate.
“That’s a little bit long but it will sound good on the radio. Where do we stand on syphilis, my coreligionists?”

“Por una sífilis criolla cien por cien.”

“Good,” said the candidate. “Down with
Penicilina
and other tricks of
Yanqui
Imperialism.”

“Down,” said Thomas Hudson.

“It seems to me as though we ought to drink something,” Honest Lil said. “How does it seem to you,
correligionarios?”

“A magnificent idea,” said the candidate. “Who but you could have had an idea like that?”

“You,” Honest Lil said.

“Attack my credit,” the candidate said. “Let’s see how my credit stands up under really heavy fire. Bar-chap, bar-fellow, boy: the same all around. And for this political associate of mine: without sugar.”

“That’s an idea for a slogan,” Honest Lil said. “Cuba’s Sugar for Cubans.”

“Down with the Colossus of the North,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Down,” repeated the others.

“We need more domestic slogans, more municipal slogans. We shouldn’t get too much into the international field while we are fighting a war and are still allies.”

“Still I think we ought to Down the Colossus of the North,” Thomas Hudson said. “It’s really an ideal time while the Colossus is fighting a global war. I think we ought to down him.”

“We’ll down him after I’m elected.”

“To
Un Alcalde Peor
,” Thomas Hudson said.

“To All of Us. To the party,” the Alcalde Peor said. He raised his glass.

“We must remember the circumstances of the founding of the party and write out the manifesto. What’s the date anyway?”

“The twentieth. More or less.”

“The twentieth of what?”

“The twentieth more or less of February.
El grito de La Floridita
.”

“It’s a solemn moment,” Thomas Hudson said. “Can you write, Honest Lil? Can you perpetuate all this?”

“I can write. But I can’t write right now.”

“There are a few more problems we have to take a stand on,” the Alcalde Peor said. “Listen, Colossus of the North, why don’t you buy this round? You’ve seen how valiant my credit is and how he stands up to the attack. But there’s no need to kill the poor bird when we know he’s losing. Come on, Colossus.”

“Don’t call me Colossus. We’re against the damn Colossus.”

“All right, governor. What do you do, anyway?”

“I’m a scientist.”

“Sobre todo en la cama,”
Honest Lil said. “He made extensive studies in China.”

“Well, whatever you are, buy this one,” the Alcalde Peor said. “And let’s get on with the platform.”

“What about the Home?”

“A sacred subject. The Home enjoys equal dignity with religion. We must be careful and subtle. What about this:
Abajo los padres de familias?”