CHAPTER 16
HOW MANY CHILDREN will we have, Jay?” she asked.
“Seven. One for each day in the week.”
“We’ll name them after the days in the week.”
“Yes. This one will be Monday.”
“Monday will be a boy,” she said.
“Are you sure seven will be enough?”
“Oh, yes. Seven will be just right.”
He looked at his wrist watch. It was twenty minutes to four. He had been in bed two hours. His mind was going from memory to memory. His mouth was dry and his head ached He sat up in bed, fumbling with mosquito netting that looked like white fog in the dim light, and poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher on the table by the bed. The water was warm and stale. Bill hadn’t come up yet.
This was really the worst for a long time. He should have gotten drunk. You could always sleep if you got drunk enough. If you didn’t get sick. He never got sick. He should have gotten drunk. Drinking helped smooth over the worst times. The ones like this. Though in the end drinking didn’t make much difference. You had so much remembering to do. That was the way you paid. You never got anything for nothing. You got a year of happiness, and then you paid with memories. Liquor just put off the paying for a while; it didn’t bring forgetfulness. Forgetfulness! What a beautiful, phony word! How could you forget when Linda’s face, lovely and sad, was with you day and night? Day and night. Night and day. How could you forget when you could remember no other faces of women you had wanted and pursued and had or not had in all the days of your life before? How could you forget your lungs, or your heart, or your bowels?
These were the old questions, and there were still no answers. He put down the glass and arranged the netting over the bed and lay back on the pillow. The trick was they made you want to pay. You did not want to give up your memories. They hurt, but they held you together, too. You were lost without them, and you were lost with them. It was what they called a paradox. But, oh God, if only he could hold her without that one sad, dark, despairing, tragic, unbearable memory!
Out of the darkness came her voice, urgent with pain.
“Jay! Jay!”
“Darling?”
“It’s happened.”
He sat up in bed and turned on the light. “You’re sure?”
“Yes. The pains are coming quite often.”
It was a week early, but they had already packed her suitcase. He helped her dress and then telephoned Dr. Hoffman. A woman with a tired voice said he was at the hospital. “Will you call and tell him Mrs. Nichols is on her way in? A baby. Have him wait.” The woman said she would.
“I’ll get the car” he told Linda.
She nodded, lying on the bed with her clothes on. The pain was coming. Her face was tight with the pain. “Hurry, darling,” she said.
He knew something was wrong. The pains should not come so often. He got the car and they waited for another pain to pass and then he helped her in and put the suitcase in the rumble seat. The sky was full of stars.
“Hurry, Jay” she said.
The top was down and the Florida air, soft and fragrant, rushed past them. “We’ll be there in twenty minutes, sweet,” he said. It was twenty-four miles to Miami.
The lights were yellow on the road rushing under them, and the tires and the motor and the air roared, like a wind in palms, and the stars seemed to hurry along with them. The heavy sea air put a fog on the windshield that the wiper could not take off. Through the fog the road was dim. Linda’s hand was on his arm and when the pain came her nails hurt his flesh. He could see how pale her face was by the dashboard light.
“Faster,” she said when the pain had gone.
The convertible would go no faster. The speedometer read ninety miles an hour. The stars raced with them. The car vibrated and fought the turns, the tires wailing on the cement. They passed a small sedan with one light. They had come ten miles. Ahead he saw the lights of Miami. Along the road were the dark shapes of refreshment stands and gasoline stations. Through palm trees on a turn gleamed a red neon light. Linda’s hand hurt his arm.
“Darling——”
He pushed the brake lever to the floor and tried to swing the wheel to the left. He wasn’t strong enough. The shadowy bulk of a van blocked the road. It was turning around. The lights caught the van, lit in gold letters BEMAN’S STORAGE AND—— The Convertible’s wheels were locked. He could not turn. Just before the crash he reached down and turned off the ignition.
He stared at the dim cloud of netting above the bed. His skin felt hot. A man and a woman were whispering outside the hotel. Their voices were low, but determined; they were arguing about something. “Oh God!” he said and closed his eyes.
The convertible was on its side, the four wheels parallel to the road. One wheel was turning slowly. There was a smell of gasoline. Broken glass sparkled on the asphalt. He was lying in grass. There had been no rain, but the grass was wet. It was wet against his face. He got to his feet.
“Linda!” he cried. “Linda! Where are you? Linda!”
The van had overturned and a man was cursing in the cabin. He was trying to force the door. The van’s lights lit the convertible and the roadside. There was something white at the base of a metal road sign. It was Linda.
“Darling” he said.
Her eyes were bright in the rays of the van’s lights. She had been thrown against the base of the sign. He knelt and took her in his arms.
“I hurt so, Jay,” she said.
It did not take her long to die. She was small and broken in his arms and she did not say another word. She died while the truckman fought to get out of his trap, cursing in terror: “Oh, Jesus! Jesus! Oh, Jesus!” She did not speak again and he did not know exactly when she died. She died with her eyes open.
He tried to hold her when the ambulance came from the hospital, but they were too strong for him. They loosened his arms and took her away and he was alone, kneeling in the glare of the headlights by the metal sign.
“Look at the gash on his face,” said the interne.
“Bleeding to death,” the driver said.
If only he had bled to death there, with his wife and his child! No, that was too easy. You had to live so you could pay for the good times. He opened his eyes and looked at the mosquito netting. His skin felt hot and his head ached. It was on nights like this, like every night for six months after she died, that he knew for certain you paid for everything. Some paid over a long period. Some raised bad children. Some had wives desert them, or cheat them. Some saw love turn to boredom, to dislike, to hatred. Others paid with memories. But all paid. Of this, on a night like this, Jay had no doubt. You paid for everything, for each good time.
Her eyes answered his silent question and they spoke to the Princes and the Hamlins and Tess Adams and the others at the table and walked across the dance floor, smelling the perfume of the women, and went out into the street. Now the orchestra sounded distant and gay, tempting them to return, but they found a taxi in front of the hotel.
“Gramercy Park,” he told the driver.
“Oh, Jay,” she said, “I thought we’d never leave!”
“Weren’t you having a good time?”
“l wanted to be alone with you.”
She raised her face to be kissed and he bent over her, taking her mouth. They clung together, body trying to touch body under the crushed clothes, the excitement in their blood. Her breasts were pressed flat against his chest and he could feel the beating of her heart.
“I want you so,” she said.
“Do you?”
“I want you so badly, Jay.”
They kissed again, violently and urgently, with closed eyes; sharing themselves in a darkness that was not the darkness of New York, but of another world.
The rectangle that was the window of his room had become gray. It would soon be dawn. His headache was worse and he wondered if he had a fever. He drank a little more of the warm water, and when he put the gl
ass back he left the netting open. It was cooler that way. He pressed his face against the pillows to shut out the light.
Bill was there, and Linda’s mother and father, and their lawyer. They had come to this room after the inquest. The lawyer was a thin man with the hushed voice of an undertaker.
“You were very fortunate to secure an accidental verdict,” he told Jay. “The speed you were going …”
Bill said, “Wouldn’t you drive fast if your wife was having a baby?”
You would know without being told that Linda’s father was rich. “Let’s get down to business,” he said. He had an imperious face and a large head covered with coarse gray hair.
Linda’s mother was a handsome woman. She had beautiful brown eyes and her hair was the gray of Linda’s father, but she was less sure of herself. She had been crying.
“Mr. Nichols.” The lawyer seemed surprised that he had spoken. He began again. “Mr. Nichols, do you intend to make any claim against the Pierce family for moneys your wife might have inherited?”
“No.”
“Will you sign a paper to that effect?”
Jay signed the paper the lawyer gave him. He signed another paper giving Linda’s father the right to take her body home for burial.
“I think that is all,” the lawyer said.
The window in this room looked out on Biscayne Bay, the blue water and the green islands bright in the sunshine. There was a park and wharves and the rows of commercial fishing boats. People in light dresses and shirt sleeves walked in the park. The lawyer put the papers Jay had signed in a brief case.
Linda’s father said to Jay: “It was an evil day for us when you met Linda.”
Linda’s mother began to weep. “You killed her,” she said.
“Do you think he did it deliberately?” Bill said.
“Why did you take her away?” Linda’s mother asked Jay.
“We loved each other,” Jay said.
“There was no need to elope,” Linda’s father said.
Jay looked up at the netting. Then he closed his eyes again. This was the memory he could not believe; his talking to Linda’s mother and father. But it was in his memory. Bill said he had talked to them. And he remembered the words.
“Wait two years, you said,” Jay said. “But we knew you’d beat us in two years. You were harder than we were. Linda knew it. I was frightened of an elopement. You had me beaten from the start. But she would not give up.”
“Don’t try to shift the blame on her,” Linda’s father said.
“No. I’m to blame. I fell in love with her. But can’t you see your hardness is to blame, too?”
“We merely asked you to wait two years.”
“Linda loved you both,” Jay said. “Couldn’t you have turned her against me in two years?”
“I wish to God I could have turned her in those first weeks.”
“You were not hard when you asked us to wait,” Jay said. “But when you wouldn’t come to the wedding; wasn’t that being hard? Was it kind to refuse to see her again? To send her clothes to her without a message? Couldn’t you have hated me without hurting her?”
“We offered her an allowance through our attorneys,” Linda’s father said.
“Your disapproval hung like a black cloud over our happiness,” Jay said. He had to go on. It was the last time he would ever see them. “Yet I can truly say we were happy. We were happy in ourselves, and we were happy about the baby. You were the only flaw. Do you realize how you hurt her? You would not see her because she eloped with me. I had no money. I spoiled your plans for a social wedding. Yet she kept your pictures on her dressing table and there was not a day she did not sit and look at them. Her love for you was unchanged, but you did not want her any more. Now you want her when it is too late and no one can tell her.”
Linda’s mother was crying. Linda’s father was silent. Bill said, “Let’s go, Jay.”
Jay spoke to Linda’s mother. “Maybe there is some way she can learn how you feel now. That’s why I’m letting you have her. Maybe she will know that her body has gone home. Maybe she will think I’ve deserted her. Once we said we would like to be buried side by side. But I think she will understand, glad to be home again, knowing that I am not there only because I want her to be happy.”
The silence was long. At last Bill said, “Let’s go, Jay.”
They went out through the reception room, past the girl at the switchboard, and walked down the corridor to the elevators. It was hot in the street and they took a taxi back to the hotel.
CHAPTER 17
THE NEXT DAY WAS CLEAR, but a wind made leaves rustle in the trees around the hotel. The wind was cold. It came off the mountains. Sunlight from the moving leaves danced on the ceiling. Jay got up at noon. He did not feel well. It was partly a hang-over and partly thinking of Linda. Bill was asleep on his back, his face drawn up on one side by the scar over his bad eye. There was a patch of light on his pillow and Jay pulled down the window shade. He dressed and went down to the bar. He ate an omelette and drank a glass of beer, and then he went for a walk. The cold air helped clear his head. When he came back to the barroom, Mr. Palmer and Lew Cable were talking with Monsieur Delage at one of the tables. Jay ordered a beer at the bar. He could hear them talking at the table. Monsieur Delage was going to supply guides and porters for the safari into the Ituri. He would have the porters ready in the morning. They would take the party to Salles’s base camp. It was as good a place as any for the okapi. The best point to enter the Ituri was, he said, forty miles along the Beni road. The porters would be ready for the safari there. Was he sure? Lew Cable asked. They would be ready, Monsieur Delage said. And if they were not? Lew Cable asked. The porters would be ready, Monsieur Delage said. He stood up. Have no doubt, he said. I have none, Lew Cable said. Bon, Monsieur Delage said. They would be ready. Of that there could be no doubt. He left the bar with Mr. Palmer. Lew Cable came over to Jay.
“Where’s Eve?”
“I don’t know,” Jay said. “Have a beer?”
“No.” Cable went out of the bar.
Jay drank the beer the bartender had brought him. Then he drank another glass. The beer settled his stomach. The bartender was a Belgian. He had a mustache and Jay did not know if he was the waiter or the night porter or another of Madame’s cousins or husbands. They all looked alike. My God! he thought suddenly, have I reached the philosophy stage on three beers? Maybe it was because he was still drunk from the night before. There was a great deal of noise in the hotel. What is it? Jay asked the bartender. It is the English party. What are they doing? They are leaving, monsieur. That is a pity. Mais oui, monsieur; a great pity.
Rollins came into the bar. “Been looking for you,” he said to Jay. His big face was red as a tomato.
“What for?” Jay asked.
“That gorilla of yours.”
“It’s not mine,” Jay said.
“Really now.” Rollins looked at the bartender. “Gin and It,” he told the bartender. “Really now,” he said to Jay.
“Another beer, too,” Jay told the bartender.
“Give you a hundred pounds for her,” Rollins said.
“You offered me that last night.”
“I was drunk. But I’ll stand back of my word. Drunk or sober. A hundred pounds. That’s my final offer. Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll leave it,” Jay said.
He heard the noise of cars outside the hotel. The English safari was ready to leave. He could hear Edna Rollins’ voice. The barman gave Rollins a glass. The drink turned out to be gin and Italian vermouth and ice. Gin and It. He’d have to remember that. It would impress Bill.
“All right,” Rollins said. “Two hundred pounds.”
“No.”
“Well, my buck-o, how much?”
“I can’t sell her.”
“Come now.” Rollins took out his wallet. He put four fifty-pound notes on the bar. “I must have her. I’ve made up my mind.”
“Why
don’t you try the Prince of Sweden?” Jay said.
“Who?”
“The Prince of Sweden. He shot fourteen. He might give you a wholesale rate.”
Rollins’ face became purple. “Bright lad, aren’t you?” he said.
“Sure,” Jay said.
Rollins put the money back in his wallet and left the bar. He had not finished his drink. He had not paid for it either. “Where’s my beer?” Jay asked the bartender.
The bartender brought him a beer and he drank it. Then he drank another. The beer was good. He paid for the beers and Rollins’ drink and went out to see the English party leave. Eve was on the veranda of the hotel with Lew Cable and a priest. The priest was young and good-looking. Mr. Palmer was talking to Holmstrom. There was quite a lot of noise. The entire town had turned out to see the safari leave. There were a dozen Belgian officials and a couple of hundred natives. It was an impressive sight, Jay thought. The safari. There were two Bentley touring cars with chromium trailers, a kitchen truck, a station wagon and six lorries. There were two ice machines, an electric plant, a twenty-valve short-wave radio, a gas stove, a wine cellar, seventeen Swahili servants and Holmstrom. In the first Bentley were Hobbs and Rollins. They both sat with rifles between their legs. They were probably going to shoot at natives along the way, Jay thought. Edna Rollins, in the second Bentley, waved to him.
“Come over,” she called.
Jay went to the car. Lady Faulkener nodded coolly to him. She did not look quite so pretty. In daylight the rouge did not blend well with her skin.
“What in hell did you do to Rolly?” Edna Rollins asked. “He’s simply boiling.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Tell me. I’d like to know. I haven’t been able to make him mad for years.”
“Ask him about the Prince of Sweden,” Jay said. “It seems to get him.”
“Really?” Edna Rollins asked.
The safari was starting. The native driver put the Bentley in gear. “Good luck,” Jay said.
“Thank you.”
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