ISLANDS IN THE STREAM

“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.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *