The Boiling Season (20 page)

“There's no beach,” she said, her voice so soft and quiet I was scarcely sure I heard it. I realized belatedly that she was talking to me.

“Pardon me?”

“There's no beach here. I expected there to be a beach.”

“It's not far.” Thanks to the new roads President Duphay was building all across the island, everything was closer than it used to be. “Just twenty minutes.”

She turned to look at me, the ice clinking in her glass. There was about her a sadness I would never have guessed someone so famous and successful could feel.

“Is it pretty?” she asked.

“Beautiful.”

“I'd like to go there.”

“Of course.” Suddenly aware of the grease on my fingers, I folded my hands together behind my back. “There's a car at your disposal. The concierge at the manor house will be glad to arrange it.” I turned to start back up the path.

“It's a long walk,” she said to my back, “and I'm not really dressed.” She sounded tired, and I found myself feeling sorry for her, this young woman of whom so much was demanded, for whom simple rest away from the eyes of the world was impossible.

“I'm on my way up there myself,” I said. “I'll make the arrangements. Your car and driver will be waiting.”

The wings of her nose wrinkled when she smiled. She was once again the breathtaking young beauty from the magazine. “You're very kind.”

S
itting with his back to the tree, the tall man looked up from his companion's cards when he saw me coming. It had been days since I had last spoken to them, and it appeared they had not moved.

“Any luck with the birds?” I said.

The tall man threw down a card. “They're very quick.”

“Elusive,” said the short man as he regarded his hand and his companion's discard with disappointment.

“I thought you might be interested in something I saw.”

The short one barely glanced at me over the tops of his cards. “What's that?”

“Something very rare,” I said slowly, enticingly. “It had a bright red belly and a long blue tail and I think its back was green. I thought you might want to come in and take a look.”

“You mean in
there
?” The short one pointed past the gate.

“We should hurry,” I said, waving them on. “Before it gets away.”

The two men dashed into each other as they rose, and I could hear them whispering as they rustled through their bags. When they were ready, the short one went around to the far side of the tree.

“Come on,” he said. He bent over, and when he came back up again he was dragging along the limp body of the third man, a gaunt figure with gray skin and yellow eyes circled by steel washers. The third man staggered forward as though both legs had fallen asleep, his clothes wrinkled and twisted around him like a candy wrapper.

“Lead the way,” the tall man said.

I stepped aside to let them through the gate.

Once the sick man got moving, momentum seemed to take over, for he quickly outpaced his companions. Down the drive we went. As we neared the manor house, I could see the three of them looking at the car waiting out front. Mlle Miller's driver sat on the hood, smoking.

“This way,” I said, and the three men followed me down a path away from the drive. Soon we were behind the manor house, winding our way among the outbuildings. It was brutally hot, even in the shade, and the men were growing tired. We passed the garage and the stables, and we lingered several minutes by the laundry while I made a show of trying to remember where I had seen the bird.

“I think it was this way,” I said, and I led the men beyond the maids' quarters and the storerooms. By now perhaps twenty minutes had passed. The sick man had grown wobbly.

“Maybe we should try that direction,” the short one said, pointing back toward the manor house.

“It must have flown away,” I said, feigning disappointment.

The tall one mopped up his forehead with his sleeve. “Right.”

So we turned around, following the same route back. I apologized again. Behind me the short man and the tall man grumbled, while the sick man struggled to keep up, and just as we were about to reach the drive, I spotted Mlle Miller's car up above us, closing in on the gate. The men were too far back to have seen her.

“Look!” I stopped just in time and pointed up into the trees. As the three men raised their heads, Mlle Miller's car cleared the gate.

“Never mind,” I said, relieved that we could finally bring the game to a close. “I guess it was nothing.”

I continued up the path, and the short man and the tall man followed, but the sick man remained where he was, head thrown back at the trees above him.

“I see it,” he said, pointing toward the sky.

There, in the crook of a giant locust tree, preening its black-and-white barred wings with its yellow bill, sat a small bird with a red belly and blue tail. It was beautiful, like nothing I had ever seen. Was it possible, I briefly wondered, for four people to share the same hallucination?

The sick man raised his camera and clicked a shot. “It's splendid.”

Speechless, I barely managed to nod.

“I knew you would like it,” I finally thought to say.

A
lthough she insisted it was true, I found it hard to believe that Madame's long-overdue return just happened to coincide with Mlle Miller's visit. Who could blame her for being starstruck?

That night I arrived at the restaurant to find Madame in the dining room going from table to table, greeting her guests with an uncharacteristically distracted air. In a glance, I noticed Mlle Miller was missing, and I feared Madame was growing impatient at the continued absence of her most famous visitor.

At the other end of the restaurant, glowering beside the swinging doors to the kitchen, stood M. Gadds. Seeing me come in, he gave me one of his testy waves, ordering me over as he disappeared inside.

When I reached the kitchen, he was standing beside the walk-in refrigerator with his arms crossed, his reddened face seemingly radiating as much heat as an oven.

With a pinch he grabbed my arm. “Where have you been?”

“Working,” I said.

We went up the back stairs to his office. For a moment after closing the door behind us, he stood behind his desk with his back to me, staring out the window.

“Sit,” he said.

“I don't wish to sit.”

When he turned around, his face was swollen with rage.

Leaning forward, he planted his hands on the leather blotter. “Did you arrange for Mlle Miller to go to the beach?”

“She asked—” I began, but M. Gadds cut me off to interject, “How many times have we talked about this?”

“I was only trying to help,” I said.

“We don't need your help.”

I knew nothing could be further from the truth. “She asked for my help.”

“How many times have I told you to leave the guests to me? It couldn't be any more simple. You get the toilets. I get the people.”

I turned to leave. “You cannot talk to me this way.”

“Her car was stopped,” M. Gadds said. “At
gunpoint
,” he added for emphasis. “Mlle Miller was taken from the car, terrorized, and made to pay a toll.”

He appeared to enjoy the silence that followed.

I lowered myself into the chair. “Does Madame know?”

“I tried to explain to Mlle Miller that it was all a misunderstanding,” M. Gadds said, continuing to stand.

“How is she?”

“She is packing.” M. Gadds picked up the phone and dialed the front desk. I heard him tell the clerk to fetch Madame from the dining room.

“How was I to know?”

“You're not,” he said. “That's why we have a concierge.”

The wait, which we passed in silence, was interminable. When Madame finally arrived, she entered without knocking, and it was clear as she regarded the two of us that she was not happy to have been interrupted.

“What is so important?”

I had to endure another telling of the story. M. Gadds was careful at every opportunity to stress my involvement, and I did not try to protest, knowing it would only make matters worse.

“Were they security forces?” Madame said, “or some sort of bandits?”

“I don't know,” M. Gadds said, at which Madame snapped irritably, “Well, find out!”

While M. Gadds was on the phone, locating the driver and ordering him to come up that instant, I heard Madame grumble, “He promised me nothing like this would ever happen.”

But it was unclear whether Madame was talking to me or to herself, and I was afraid to ask to whom she was referring.

The driver was out of breath when he reached us, and he looked terrified even before M. Gadds began to speak.

“Tell us who the men were,” M. Gadds ordered, motioning for him to sit. “You've done nothing wrong. Tell us what they looked like.”

The man slowly lowered himself into the seat, just as I had a moment before, looking nervously from one of us to the next.

Madame leaned in closer. “What did they wear? Did they wear khakis and sunglasses? Were they the president's men?”

He nodded hesitantly.

With a smile to show him he had done well, Madame thanked and dismissed him.

As soon as he was gone, she stood, her face contorted with fury.

“This cannot be permitted.” Her voice carried a disturbingly false note of calm. She was careful not to slam the door as she left.

D
uring the next two hours, as I waited for Madame to emerge from her office, I tried to contemplate what might happen. I would be fired—that much was clear. I had always thought that to be my worst fear, but now that it was upon me, I realized what worried me more was what this might mean for the hotel. As M. Gadds said, once word of what had happened got out, we would be ruined. And I thought of the photographers outside the gate, who must have been there when Mlle Miller returned. I could imagine the story that would appear in the magazines, with photos of the terrified young beauty dramatizing her ordeal. After all our struggles, all our effort, could we be undone by something like this?

It was late and I was pacing on my balcony when I first heard and then saw the black car come speeding down the drive. Directly below me, it came to a screeching stop. Out of the back stepped a man in a dark suit and a narrow-brimmed hat. At the bottom of the broad stone steps he paused, reaching toward his throat to adjust his tie.

With my ear to my office door, I heard a phone ring—the front desk calling up to Madame's office. And then, a minute later, came the footsteps, two sets, as the desk clerk led the man in the narrow-brimmed hat to Madame's door. He went inside, and the other set of footsteps trailed away back downstairs.

I tried to guess who the man might be, but it was impossible to know. He might have been someone the president had sent, or maybe someone from the embassy.

After half an hour, I could no longer wait. I knocked on M. Gadds's door. He was out. I went downstairs, hoping he might be at the front desk, but he was not there either, and neither was the clerk. The porter who was temporarily covering for him did not know where they were.

“Did they say anything about the man who came to see Madame?”

“No,” he said, and then he nodded past my shoulder. “But you could ask her yourself.”

Descending the stairs in matching steps, both of their mouths molded into polite smiles, were Mme Freeman and Senator Marcus's old friend, the minister of health. The sight was so strange, these two pieces so puzzlingly placed together, I could only stare.

At the bottom, before separating, Madame and the minister of health shared a few quiet words and then shook hands, and I watched the minister of health return to the car waiting below.

“It's going to be okay,” Mme Freeman said once he was gone.

“That was the minister of health,” I said.

“Of course not,” she said. “That was the minister of tourism.”

I was taken aback. “I wasn't aware we had one.”

“We do now.” And then she wished me good night.

Chapter Fifteen

A
s far as we could tell, the incident did not appear in any of the papers or magazines. Madame had people keeping an eye on them in the States. I was careful to peruse everything I found lying about the manor house. Within days of her return home, Mlle Miller's photo resumed appearing in the weeklies, but the captions never said anything about us. There on those glossy pages, the young actress was her radiant self again. It was hard to believe any misfortune had ever been visited upon her.

Despite the promises of the minister of tourism, for the next several weeks we were cautious, discouraging guests from excursions beyond the gate. It seemed we were not the only ones complaining about incidents involving the security forces. For an organization supposedly disbanded, they suddenly appeared to be everywhere. The president denied it, going so far as to make a televised speech assuring us it was not so.

“We are experiencing the greatest peace and prosperity we have had in decades,” he said. “Let us not jeopardize this with irresponsible and upsetting rumors.”

The next day, a reporter thought to be a source of some of these rumors went missing.

H
aving been forced to close our guests off from the rest of the island, we had to do what we could to bring the island to them. In addition to the usual evening performances at the pavilion, we hired a rotation of bands to play all day long. The estate began to feel as though it were in the midst of a party that never ceased.

At M. Gadds's suggestion, around lunchtime each day craftswomen from the Cité Verd market came and spread their beadwork purses and hand-carved wooden icons on blankets around the manor house pool. Anything our guests wished to buy we added directly to their bills.

Yet however much we tried, it was impossible to keep the troubles outside from sometimes seeping in, especially as those troubles began to spill beyond the island's shores. Food shortages resulting from the drought persisted. For reasons as numerous as they were intractable, the economy was in collapse.

In the middle of May, just as tourist season was beginning to pick up again, stories started to surface in the foreign press about coast guard vessels intercepting refugees fleeing the island in homemade dinghies.

“Boat people,” one of the articles quipped, had “become the island's main export.”

With each new article, we received more cancellations.

One morning a few weeks later, at our bench in the preserve, I shared my concerns with Madame. As her most trusted confidant, what choice did I have but once again to be the one to deliver the difficult news?

“If this doesn't stop soon,” I said, more bluntly than I ever had before, “I don't know how much longer we can survive.”

“I know,” she said. Never had she sounded so defeated.

“Have you spoken with M. Rossignol?”

“Of course.”

“What does he say?”

Madame threw up her hands. “We're on an island,” she said. “They can't patrol every inch of shore.”

However deep her frustration, I could not be sure she truly appreciated how dire the situation was. Under President Mailodet she had watched as things went from bad to worse, but she had seen too little to understand that those had not been isolated events. Those conditions were always with us, and unless one did something to stop them, they would forever return.

“There is one other thing we could try.”

Her head hung low as she turned it toward me.

“Sometimes,” I said, “it's not enough to tell them how important something is. You have to show them, too.”

“And how do you do that?”

“You hand them a briefcase,” I said, regretting the words even as I knew I had no choice but to say them. “And inside the briefcase you place whatever you think the thing is worth.”

“Never,” she said. “Absolutely not.”

Without another word she got up and walked away. My breath left me as I watched her go.

F
or the next two mornings, Madame was absent from our bench. Whenever I saw her in the manor house, she turned the other way. I could not blame her for her reaction; mine would have been no different. But we both knew there was no other option. Nor was there any time to waste.

On the third day she called to make the appointment. I do not know what finally changed her mind. What could it have been but desperation?

M
. Rossignol's office was only a block from where Senator Marcus's office had been, and it would have been impossible as I entered not to look at the chairs in the lobby and see myself sitting there quietly for hours, waiting for the moment the Senator would need me to take him somewhere. Given how much time had passed, the thought was more upsetting than I would have expected. But time had done nothing to lessen the pain.

There were the same young secretaries and clerks, the same shiny, opulent desks. The world should not be permitted to go on, unchanged, as if such terrible things had not happened. A man such as Senator Marcus should not disappear without his absence being everywhere preserved.

The receptionist offered me coffee, and when I declined, a seat.

My wait was brief. Scarcely had I settled in with the briefcase at my feet than she was standing before me, saying the minister was ready.

There was a time, not long ago, when I could not have walked down a corridor such as this, lined with dark paneling and gilt frames, without feeling I did not belong. But I was no longer the shopkeeper's son, nor the boy sleeping in a stuffy attic. I was a man with an opulent office of my own. I was a man with a briefcase full of money.

When I arrived in his doorway, the minister of tourism was standing behind his desk with his hands behind his back. He looked far better than he had at the party. The paunch was still there across his middle, but in his new suit he seemed solid and substantial instead of old and worn out. The ferocity was back in his eyes as well, as if the new post had greatly improved his sleep.

With a bow, the secretary ushered me in and then stepped away.

I had assumed M. Rossignol would be expecting Mme Freeman, but he seemed not at all surprised at the sight of me. Nevertheless, I could not say he was pleased—but when had he ever been pleased?

“Monsieur,” he said, lowering his eyes and gesturing toward a chair.

“Thank you for seeing me,” I said. “I know how busy you must be.” But as I came around to take a seat, I noticed the cleanliness of his desk, the almost complete lack of files and papers. Remembering the mess I had found in the trunk of his car all those years ago, I would never have expected him to be so tidy. Then again, with tourists fleeing the country even faster than the boat people, perhaps there was not much work to be done.

There was just a phone, a silver pen in an ebony stand, and a framed photograph of his wife.

“I suppose this was inevitable,” he said.

I looked up from the case at my feet. “Pardon?”

“Your being here like this.”

I shrugged. “How do you mean?”

“I've known you a long time,” he said. “I know it's no accident, your being here today.” Then he leaned forward, and I could smell the bitter coffee on his breath. “Let's be clear. I'm not looking to judge. It's no accident that I'm here either.”

In the days leading up to the meeting, and even during the ride into the city, I had endlessly rehearsed exactly what I would say and how I would say it. I had even practiced the handing over of the briefcase. Perhaps it was because I had worked out so careful a script that I felt so disoriented now. With his eyes boring into me, my confidence began to flag, and I turned again to the picture on his desk.

“Your wife,” I said. “I saw her at the party. She seemed very kind.”

He looked at her and then at me. “That's another thing we have in common,” he said. “We choose our women well.”

I said, “I don't have a wife.”

“You have something better,” he said. “Your Mrs. Freeman is here only a few months a year. You get the benefits she brings, and you also have your freedom.”

“I'm very fond of Mme Freeman,” I said, hoping to bring that line of discussion to an end. “I like her very much.”

“And I like my wife, too, although that's not why I married her.” M. Rossignol sat back with a smirk on his face. “You don't know why I married her, do you? You don't know who she is.”

I shook my head.

“You might know her by her maiden name,” he said. “Duphay.”

“I see,” I said, and in fact it was the first time since I sat down that I felt I understood anything.

“Obviously the marriage has brought me certain benefits,” he said, and the sweep of his hands conducted my eyes over the amenities of the office. “But in the long run,” he added, more somberly now, “I wonder which of us is better off.”

“I'm sure Mlle Duphay—that is, Mme Rossignol—has a great deal more influence.”

“I'm sure you're right,” he said. “But around here you never know how long anything will last.”

I could see he was enjoying the long silence that followed and the discomfort it caused me. Was he waiting for me to say I felt certain President Duphay would be around for a long time to come—that his patronage was safe? Or did he imagine I was one of the many waiting for his downfall? If I had truly felt free to share my thoughts, I would have said I did not care. Let them rise, let them fall, as long as they left me in peace.

“As for you and me,” he said, “we'll do whatever it takes to survive.” As he got to his feet I felt a wash of relief, knowing the moment had finally come.

Without bothering to open it, he accepted the case and set it down behind his desk. However glad I was that it was over, I still shared Madame's disgust.

“Think what you will,” he said, scrutinizing my face. “I know you better than you realize. You've worked hard to get where you are. I know where you started out. You're not about to give up the things you fought so hard to get. When your time comes, you'll do exactly the same as me.”

I decided I would rather let him think what he wished than remain there a moment longer, arguing the point. All I could think was how distraught—though perhaps not surprised—Senator Marcus would be to see how low his former friend had sunk.

I
knew enough not to expect Madame to be happy with the outcome of my meeting with the minister of tourism. However well we succeeded, for her the ends would always be tainted by the means. For that reason, I took the burden of it upon myself, sharing with her nothing of what had transpired. I did not enjoy her disapproval and continued absence from our bench in the preserve, but I knew it was necessary. I could only hope it would pass. In the meantime, I had to ignore the knives piercing my stomach whenever I saw her across the room, pretending not to see me.

The results came more quickly than I had imagined. Even with our contribution, M. Rossignol could not afford to patrol every meter of shore, but the boat people were immediately made to understand that the coast guard and the rough open waters were no longer the only dangers they faced. The minister of tourism finally found a way to put the security forces to good use, raiding beaches and docks where launches were known to occur and making arrests of ferry operators hiring themselves out for smuggling.

Within a month, the number of newspaper stories, both here and abroad, had dwindled to such an extent that some sources were already claiming the government crackdown complete.

But we had little time to savor our success; problems continued to pile up faster than we could solve them.

More and more I was overhearing the maids and bus boys murmuring about trouble in Cité Verd, where virtually all of their families lived. Security forces had recently begun showing up at the market there, collecting “taxes” and demanding bribes. In a place as poor as that, it was hard to imagine why they would bother. What could those few pennies buy? The tiny return would seem like disincentive enough, but I had also been hearing about a growing resistance, a gang of men and boys armed with rocks and bottles who were fighting back, building barricades to keep the security forces out.

In late June, four months after Mlle Miller's ordeal, the problem became a crisis. One afternoon, several members of the security forces—out of drunkenness or boredom or sport—beat a pregnant woman unconscious with a brick. And then they stabbed her in the stomach and left her to die.

Minutes later, a mob gathered at the market, bearing machetes and whatever guns they could find. That night they caught a man from the security forces by surprise and strung him from a telephone pole.

This time I did not bother going to Madame or M. Gadds. There were some things, it had become clear, that I would need to take care of myself.

The next afternoon, passing by two of the gardeners resting under a tree by the stables, I heard one of them say, “If it's war they're after, they're going to get it.”

“You,” I said, rushing over before they could say any more. “Both of you. I want you out of here at once.”

They looked at me as if I were crazy, but when a moment passed and they still had not moved, I kicked the one sitting closest to me in the leg. “Now!” I shouted. They stood up, and I grabbed each one by the arm and led them toward the gate.

“Our things,” one of them said. “We need our things.”

“You should have thought of that before.”

“Before what?”

By then we had reached the gate, and I ordered the guards to open it. “If you're so interested in the revolution,” I said, “you're free to join it. I don't ever want to see you here again.”

The guards were mystified, standing off by their shack, not wanting to get too close. “If I ever hear that you let them back in,” I said, pointing at their chests, “I'll throw you out just as quickly.”