The Blue Afternoon

by William Boyd

  He climbed the stairs to her room and met a nurse at her door, leaving, carrying a tray with the remains of a meal on it. He knocked and entered when she called. She sat up in bed, propped against pillows, her dull red hair down on her shoulders, an open book in her lap. Through the open window he could see over the huge overgrown city walls to a portion of the botanical garden with its ill-tended scrubby, dusty allies bordered by a turbid brown loop of the Pasig. Lunchtime smoke rose from the kitchens of Quiapo beyond. There was a haze this morning, he thought, humid, it might have been a day in June.

  “Mrs Sieverance, how are you?”

  “Better than ever.” She smiled at him. She was always pleased to see him, he knew. The man who had saved her life: she trusted him, her friend, her saviour. “I sat in the chair to read. I got in and out of bed. Not a twinge.”

  “We’ll have those stitches out soon.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  “May I?” He laid a palm on her brow. These excuses to touch, how much longer did he have? Her brown confident eyes looked up at him. He reached for her wrist and proceeded to take her pulse. Her lips were slightly parted and he saw the pink tip of her tongue moisten her front teeth with saliva. Her hair was thick, dry, no shine, almost matt. Her nightgown was pale blue cotton. Her bed jacket was quilted in small puffy diamonds, badged with embroidered crimson crosses. He had to speak.

  “Henry James,” he said, pointing to the book. It was Portrait of a Lady. “I’ve only read Daisy Miller.” He let go her wrist.

  “I met him once, you know,” she said. “In Switzerland, in Geneva a few years ago. I was introduced by a friend of mine who knew him well. Constance Fenimore Woolson. She was an extraordinary person, wonderful. Do you know her novels?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. Out here we fall behind.”

  “I’ll lend you them.”

  “Thank you, I’d like that.” The plan grew, flourished, in an instant. An exchange of reading matter. Annaliese was always reading novels, the house was full of them. “Were you and Colonel Sieverance travelling through Europe?”

  “No, I wasn’t with him. He’d—” She was about to go on, and say something a little uncomplimentary, he guessed, but she stopped herself. “We weren’t married then. No, I was with a friend and her aunt.” She smiled at him, a little mockingly, he thought. “Colonel Sieverance and I have only been married four years. We can do some things on our own, us women, you know. Some of us are even capable of buying a steamer ticket, taking a ship across the ocean and travelling in foreign lands.”

  “You mustn’t make fun of me, Mrs Sieverance,” he said. “I’m only a simple surgeon.”

  Her shout of laughter both startled and thrilled him. It was a mock-indignant blare, unselfconscious and raucous. He heard it ring in his ears like a hosannah.

  He grinned back happily at her. Like a loon. Like a jolly galoot.

  She frowned suddenly. “You mustn’t do that to me, Dr Carriscant. I felt that.” She reached her hand beneath the sheet to touch her side and twisted round to ease her position. Carriscant thought he detected, in the way her bed jacket moved, the roll of her breasts beneath her nightgown as she shifted from one hip to another. He felt an utter helplessness suffuse him, in the face of his feelings for this woman, a massive impotency.

  “Simple surgeon, indeed,” she said, wagging her finger at him. “I won’t accept that for one minute. Not for one minute.”

  At that moment the nurse returned and he said he had to leave.

  “That novelist you mentioned. What was her name?”

  “Fenimore Woolson. I’ll get my husband to bring the book.”

  “No,” he said too quickly. “I mean, ah, no hurry. I’ll have to come to your home occasionally once you’ve moved back. I can pick it up any time.”

  He paused, suddenly fearful: this was the wrong note, exactly the wrong note upon which to leave. Too familiar, too full of assumptions. He had to think of something else and, as usually happens at moments of pressure, his brain came up with banalities.

  “Is there anything you would like?” he said. “Anything special I can fetch for you. I don’t know, I—”

  “Well, there is, you know,” she said. “I asked Jepson but he had no luck. I have this craving for sugared violets. Crystallised violets, you know? A complete craving. They’re my favourite thing. I brought pounds with me but I’ve finished them all. I sit here reading and want to dip my fingers into a bowl of sugared violets from time to time. I find my hand drifting out into mid-air. Do you think you could find them in Manila?” She looked at him slyly, teasing. “I’d be even more in your debt, Dr Carriscant.”

  “I’ll do my—” He cleared his throat, suddenly nervous, suddenly moved. The air seemed lambent with potential, all at once. “I’ll see what I can do.” He managed a fast smile and then was gone.

  TEA WITH PATON BOBBY

  The Government Ice Plant was situated on the south bank of the Pasig next to the Colgante suspension bridge. Carriscant watched three huge misty blocks of ice being winched out of the plant’s store and lowered on to the creaking boards of a caraboa wagon. The placid buffaloes stood immobile in their traces, blinking away the fitful flies as loops of green cud dropped from their slowly working jaws.

  As the third block was lowered on to the boards Carriscant repeated his instructions. “You have twenty minutes. We won’t pay if even ten per cent has melted.” The caraboa were enthusiastically flogged into action and the wagon slowly trundled off towards the Parian gate into the walled city.

  He heard his name being called and turned to see who it was. Paton Bobby leaned out of a victoria and beckoned him over.

  “I was looking for you at the hospital,” he said. “They told me you were buying ice. Still keeping them fresh, huh?”

  “Remarkably. If we change the top layer of ice, a foot or so, every three days, it seems to last very well. In fact the bottom of the case is solid impacted ice. Seems to melt and, as it trickles down, refreezes.”

  “Great. So we don’t need to worry about the refrigeration plant.”

  There was a new refrigeration plant in San Miguel, recently built beside the nurses’ quarters. Carriscant had suggested that they use this facility as a place where the corpses could be stored indefinitely, but Wieland had officially turned the request down on the grounds of it being a health hazard. Now it made no difference: there was no sign of decomposition, the bodies were almost completely frozen.

  “I must admit Cruz’s trunks do their job well. And at least we know where they are, and who can get to them.”

  “Exactly,” Bobby said. “It was a good idea. Smart.”

  “Any developments?”

  “Maybe…You got half an hour? Can I offer you some tea or coffee? We can go to the American Club.”

  The American Club was on the Calle de San Augustin in Intramuros, not far from the hospital. It was an old rambling house with some of the interior walls on the first floor removed to create larger public rooms, notably a dining room and a spacious salon with punkah fans and rattan furniture and month-old copies of American newspapers. The windows had not been glazed as was the usual American habit and the old translucent kapis shells had been kept, producing a filtered soft light that left the corners of the room dark and shadowy. A Chinese waiter brought them American coffee and a plate of small sweetened rice cakes. The club was almost empty at this hour: Carriscant saw a naval officer sleeping in a corner on a steamer chair, a group of businessmen in white drill suits playing poker, the smoke from their cigars barely stirred by the slow sway of the punkah, and from a room at the rear of the house, overlooking the azotea, came the dull ivory click of cannoning billiard balls.

  Bobby drank his coffee, ate three rice cakes and filled a small corn-cob pipe with tobacco from a soft leather pouch. The pipe had a tiny bowl, so small it seemed almost as if it were designed for an apprentice smoker. Bobby puffed it quickly alight and plumed smoke sideways from the corner of his mouth.


  “You do grow great tobacco here, I will grant you that.”

  “Worth all the effort of colonisation?”

  “Oh, I don’t know about these things. I just appreciate a good smoke.”

  They talked a bit about Taft, about the rumours that Roosevelt had offered him a post in the Supreme Court.

  “Think he’ll go?” Carriscant asked.

  “He’s a lawyer. Supreme Court judge has got to be the top of that particular tree.”

  They nattered on, Carriscant waiting patiently. He knew Bobby well enough by now to understand that this display of sociability was not disinterested. And soon enough Bobby leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

  “Wieland says you were in Sampaloc. In a creep-joint.”

  “Yes.” This did not surprise him. Wieland was unlikely to keep that information to himself, especially now, but what was it to Bobby? “Wieland was drunk, by the way,” Carriscant threw in for good measure. “Very.”

  “You go there often? Not that I care,” he added quickly. “I whore myself from time to time.”

  “I was visiting my cook’s mother. She was ill.”

  Bobby looked at him, his eyes expressionless. Giving me time to change my story, Carriscant thought. Old policeman’s trick.

  “A hernia.” Why did he lie? It would be so easy to prove him wrong.

  “Wieland never saw you leave. Reckons you spent the night there.”

  “What’s all this about? Wieland wasn’t capable of seeing anything. I left. I didn’t see him either, come to that.”

  Bobby emptied his toy pipe with a couple of sharp raps on the rim of an ashtray.

  “You never went back?”

  “No.”

  Bobby made a face as if he had just heard baddish news. He stood up, nodded at one of the card-playing businessmen and patted his uniform pockets absentmindedly, as if he had forgotten his wallet.

  “I don’t want to take up any more of your time, Dr Carriscant, but I’d appreciate it if you’d make one more visit with me.”

  “I don’t have all day,” Carriscant said, rising to his feet. “Where are we going?”

  The police station at the Parian gate was a building Carriscant had passed hundreds of times without its drawing anything but the most cursory glance from him. It was made of bulik adobe and its ground-floor windows were extravagantly barred, as if baroque cast-iron cages had been built around the window embrasures. Inside it was surprisingly cool, the thick walls fending off the heat of the afternoon sun. Bobby led him down a corridor and swung open an iron-studded wooden door. There was a small desk in the middle of the room occupied by a Filipino constable, and against the opposite wall was a rickety wooden form. An old man was sitting on this, patiently smoking a cigarette. Carriscant recognised him at once.

  “Do you know this man?” Bobby asked.

  “No.”

  The old man began to jabber in Tagalog, pointing his cigarette directly at Carriscant, grinning and chuckling, exposing his few betel-stained teeth.

  The constable translated. “He says he saw this man in the acacia woods between Sampaloc and Nactajan on the morning of that day. He lives in Nactajan. He was gathering firewood at dawn and he found this Americano in the woods. This is the man.”

  Bobby turned to Carriscant, his face empty, neutral. “Is there any truth in this?”

  “Of course not.” Carriscant lied instantly, with composure, without fear, for some reason. “What’s going on here, Bobby?”

  “We have to follow everything up.” He shrugged. “The only unusual thing, the only thing that was out of the ordinary around Sampaloc during the time Braun went missing was this American that was seen at dawn. This old fellow here gave us a very accurate description. I have to say the more he went on the more it sounded like you.”

  “I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

  “And there’s a barca ferryman says he ferried a kastila. At least he spoke Spanish to him. At dawn that same day. But he can’t give us any description. Seems all kastilas look the same to him…But somebody, some white man was out around Sampaloc at that time. I want to find out who.”

  “You think this man might have killed Braun?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just investigating.”

  The old man started yammering again and everyone looked round. His face was held in a merry, creased grimace as he rocked to and fro, his fist pumping up and down in his lap, his other hand pointing the glowing end of his cigarette at Carriscant. The constable shouted angrily at him to stop.

  “What’s going on?” Bobby demanded, amazed.

  The constable’s embarrassment was clear. “He say this man,” he glanced at Carriscant, “he say he was holding him pecker. You know, with hand, he was playing—”

  “Stop,” Bobby said. “I heard enough. Get this disgusting old fool out of here.”

  Bobby and Carriscant stood in the afternoon sun on the police station’s front steps, Carriscant assuring Bobby once again that he was fine, that he understood Bobby had his job to do and that he really wanted to walk back to the hospital.

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” Bobby repeated. “Sick old bastard.” He was visibly sweating with embarrassment and discomfort, his thin hair stuck to his scalp in damp strands.

  “You had to do your job. Honestly, I’d have done the same.”

  “He had you to a tee. Right down to that small scar thing on your eyebrow there…But I guess you’re a pretty well-known man in Manila. Small town and all that. He could have seen you at the hospital, anything.” He shook himself with exasperation. “Crazy old bastard. I mean, what a thing to say.” He grinned ruefully at Carriscant and Carriscant allowed himself a grin of collusion in return.

  THE FOUR-CYLINDER 12 H.P. FLANQUIN

  Udo Leys had a bad cold, his eyes itched, his nose ran copiously and he had a dull pain in his chest from the dry, baying cough that erupted irregularly in his lungs. He sounded like some strange mythical animal in its rutting season, plaintively seeking a mate, half sea-lion, half ape, he said, his amusement at this notion setting off another coughing bout. It subsided and he blew his nose, wiping his tufty moustache with considerable care.

  “I may be an old man,” he said, “but that’s no excuse. There’s nothing more disgusting than an old man’s moustache when he’s got a cold. My own father’s, I remember…” He winced. “Full of dried snot. It quite put me off my food. You will tell me, Salvador, if I miss anything, please.” He pushed his lumpy face forward for inspection, lifting his soft pulpy nose with a finger.

  “Of course, Udo. There’s not a trace.”

  “Is it far to go?” Pantaleon asked. Carriscant could sense the suppressed tremble of excitement in his friend’s lean body. Like a gun dog, quivering with energy and anticipation.

  “Ten minutes,” Udo said. “They cleared customs this afternoon.”

  “And there were no problems?”

  “I tell you, Dr Quiroga, there is nobody like Nicanor Axel in the China Sea.” Udo led them to the door. “When it comes to a discreet or delicate commission Axel is the only man. He has worked wonders for me, wonders.”

  They descended from the office to the Calle Crespo, the street almost silent now the tin shops were shut, but from the far end came the firecracker retorts from the shooting gallery and the sound of a barrel organ playing ‘Deep in the Heart of Texas’. They heaved Udo into Carriscant’s victoria and squeezed in beside him. Constancio whacked the pony’s rear and they clopped off in the direction of the docks, detouring Escolta’s crowds of shoppers on Panteleon’s request (in case he was spotted, he said), going instead via the Plaza Calderon and swinging round through dark malodorous lanes between warehouses to emerge at the quayside next to the fire station.

  They descended and peered at the mass of shipping moored on the Pasig. Smoke rose from braziers on the sterns of the wallowing cascos and the glare of the electric light from the fire station and the customs house made it difficult to see
beyond the water’s edge: nothing much more than a confusion of masts and rigging and here and there, further out from the wharves, the solider, darker bulk of the inter-island steamers and coasters.

  “What about the way back?” Carriscant asked. “Will there be room?”

  “Don’t worry,” Pantaleon said. “I’ll take it straight home. I’ll hire a carromato.”

  Constancio was despatched in search of one and then the three men picked their way on sagging gangplanks across the banked houseboats towards where Axel’s steamer was moored. Families sat around cooking fires preparing dinner, only the children curious about these three Americanos in their white suits tramping through their homes.

  “Why doesn’t he put in at a jetty?” Carriscant asked.

  “Nothing is meant to be easy or straightforward,” Udo explained cryptically. “Your business with Axel has to be very important for you to make this effort.”

  Moored alongside the outlying casco was Nicanor Axel’s ugly little steamer the General Blanco. It was a wide, low-lying coaster with its tall single smokestack set aft and conspicuously raked. In front of the bridge superstructure were three holds with primitive-looking derricks above them. A foul smell, acid and corrupt, seemed to hang like a miasma about the craft. Carriscant felt his stomach turn and he put his handkerchief to his nose as the three of them climbed the angled ladder to the deck, Udo’s genial bellows of ‘Nicanor, Nicanor, where are you?’ preceding them.

  On deck Carriscant thought he had located the source of the smell. One of the holds was full of livestock, goats and kids, and the floor of the hold seemed to be lined with rotting vegetation, as far as he could tell from the light thrown by a hanging oil lantern.