Dark Memory

by Jonathan Latimer

  “It does smell good,” Eve said.

  “Yes. How are you at cooking?”

  “Not good at all.”

  “No ideas?”

  “You’re doing splendidly.”

  The leg and the chops were beginning to brown. The cooking meat smelled fine and they both watched the chops. Jay wanted to cut them from the leg, but he forced himself to wait until they were done. At last they were brown on both sides and he held the leg while Eve cut off the chops. Then he put the leg back on the fire. She gave him a chop, and he took a bite and burned his lips. He was terribly hungry. He nibbled on the outside of the chop. The flesh was warm and firm and blood-sweet. It was a little bit like veal.

  “Nothing was ever so good,” Eve said.

  “It’s because we’re hungry.”

  “I’ll never believe that. It’s simply good.”

  “I am a fine cook.”

  “Yes. That’s it, darling.” She smiled at him. “Do have another.”

  They ate the chops and then the leg. Jay could not get enough meat. He ate long after Eve had finished. They decided the calf would keep better if they cooked it. He ate while Eve watched the second hindquarter.

  “Aren’t you afraid you’ll founder?” she asked.

  “I’d like to.”

  It was past noon when the meat was done. There had been no sign of the buffaloes. The sky was full of clouds and they heard thunder in the distance. They tied leaves around the meat to keep off the insects. Jay took the knapsack and two of the quarters of meat. Eve took the other quarter and they started off to the east.

  CHAPTER 32

  NOW, AS DAYS PASSED, Jay became certain they would never get out of the Ituri. This knowledge, in some way, made his memory more active. He would often wake at night, hearing the noises of insects and Eve’s breathing, and think of the past. The memories came helter-skelter, without order or choice or apparent relation; some good and some bad, some important and some meaningless; often very close to dreams; mingling truth and falsehood, ignoring time, taking liberties with place and person. This was curious because all his life he had lived on his imagination, not his memory; except in the case of Linda. And now he did not often think of her. That was because he had Eve. Yet there was no feeling of disloyalty to Linda. They said you could only love once. They said it in books, and in poetry, and in plays, but it was not so. You had only to look at the happy second marriages to see this. Or at the love life of any normal adult male. He had loved Linda truly, and now he loved Eve. They were different, and he loved them differently, but both truly. He did not try to explain it, but it was so and he did not feel guilty.

  Sometimes, lying with Eve on soft leaves near a fire that was like a yellow crack in the night, he thought about Lucien Salles. He wondered if he was in the forest, too, or was dead, or had been found. It would be an unpleasant thing if they got out, and Salles had been found and wanted Eve. It would be up to Eve. This was not likely to happen, though, and he did not worry about it. His mind and his emotions were jumbled anyway. He was sad because he and Eve were going to die in the forest, but he was very happy to be with her. He was not very frightened, but he probably would be later, when the food gave out.

  What he remembered mostly was his childhood. His mind was like a very old person’s, remembering best the things that had happened longest ago. He wondered if that was the body’s way of preparing for death, to let the mind reach back nearer and nearer to the time when it was first given life. He remembered coming home weeping from a fight he’d lost at the public school, miserable because he’d quit when he needn’t have, and another fight at camp where he’d been licked, but hadn’t quit, and the first time he’d kissed a girl, Nancy, at dancing class, in the hall where the coats were hung. He remembered the gang he played with, and searching for crabs on the mud flats, and his bicycle being stolen, and root beers, and breaking a window with his sling and mowing the lawn for three months to pay for it, and the haunted house, and licorice whips and jelly beans, and Pete, the brindle bull with the torn ear, and firecrackers, and Pearl White in the movies, and the Tom Swift books, and the black cat that lived in the cellar at his grandfather’s house, and the pony he got for Christmas that bit him, and the manual training teacher he was going to lick when he grew up, and long trousers, and being sick with whooping cough and having to drink olive oil, and many other things.

  Always moving to the east, realizing it was no good, but not giving up because it would frighten Eve; searching for game; sleeping by fires; making love; being hungry; talking; and the thoughts and memories that were so far from Africa made the days pass.

  CHAPTER 33

  ON THIS MORNING they started early. They walked for a long time before the gray mist went up past the treetops and vanished and the sun came through the holes in the forest’s roof. Then it got very hot. Butterflies flew ahead of them, and in the trees they saw flowers and birds. There was steam where the sun reached the earth in the clearings. The forest became noisy as soon as the mist lifted. They walked on the path past shrill whistles, harplike notes, croakings, grunts, the clear sound of a bell, a tractor engine, a woman screaming in agony, hisses, cymbals, a boy running with a stick against a picket fence, hoots, wails, moos, grinding teeth, radio static, a leaking water tap. They were not disturbed by these sounds, made by the insects, the frogs and toads, the reptiles and small animals and birds of the Ituri. They had grown used to them. They walked for an hour after the mist had gone. Their clothing was wet with sweat.

  “Let’s rest,” Jay said.

  They sat on a fallen log. Eve looked thin, her skin tight over her cheekbones and her jaw. She saw Jay looking at her and smiled.

  “I keep thinking of roast beef,” she said.

  “Don’t.”

  “Rare roast beef,” she said. “At Simpson’s in London. I can’t help it, darling. I’m so hungry.”

  “Let’s eat something.”

  “That will throw us off our schedule.”

  “We don’t care,” he said.

  “We can wait. We have to. How much have we left?”

  “Enough for six more meals.”

  “Meals! Do you call them meals?”

  “No.”

  “Why can’t we starve quickly? Darling, let’s eat and be full and then starve quickly.”

  “That wouldn’t be very sensible.”

  Her face became sad. “Yes, we must be sensible,” she said.

  Later this day low clouds hid the sky. The clouds made it cool in the forest, but the trail was harder to follow in the half-light. Jay decided to stop for the night when they came to a clearing or a stream. He liked to have a fire going before sundown. He had three matches left. He did not know what they would do after the matches were gone. He wondered if it would be possible to carry live coals. He knew pygmies carried them. Suddenly he noticed Something unusual about the forest. It was absolutely silent. He could not hear a sound. He looked for birds and butterflies, but the forest was deserted. He could not even see insects. It was strange. He had never heard such a complete silence. Eve noticed it, too. She came up close behind him. It was like being in a bewitched forest. He was frightened. He touched Eve’s hand and they walked very fast along the trail, their feet padding on the soft earth. He could not understand the silence. His breath hissed in his throat. He walked a little faster. They were almost running when they heard the song of a bird again and saw a butterfly.

  The moonlight made the night mist iridescent. It turned the bare trunks of the trees around the clearing silver white. The trunks stood out against the black wall of the forest. The night mist clung to the ground. In the forest a night bird was crying. It kept uttering a single note, low pitched and sad. Everything looked different and unreal in the moonlight.

  “Are you asleep, Jay?” Eve asked.

  “No.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said.

  “What?”

  “We do have fun, don’t we, darling?”
r />   “More than anybody.”

  “Yes, more than anybody.”

  The drifting mist was like the inside of an oyster shell. Jay saw purples and blues and violets in it. Moisture glistened on the grass.

  “Is that what you were thinking?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “What were you?”

  “Darling,” she said, “what do lost people do about babies?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, in books nobody ever seems to have children. I mean lost people, or shipwrecked people.”

  “I guess a packing case of contraceptives is always washed ashore.”

  “The authors never say so.”

  “Eve, you’re not going to have a baby?”

  “No, but I could.”

  “Please, try not.”

  “I don’t want one, you know.”

  “I know, sweet.”

  “Why do people assume it’s entirely up to the woman?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that I had an unfortunate experience with a baby.”

  “Oh, darling, I know. I was just talking. Isn’t the moonlight lovely?”

  When day came the forest was filled with a damp, cotton-white fog, and later it began to rain. It rained all day and they did not leave their camp, but sat close to the fire, trying to keep warm and dry, smelling the wood smoke and talking and sleeping. It was not a hard rain. It was more mist than rain, and the forest did not roar as it had during the storm. There was, though, a steady noise of dripping water. They were both very hungry, but they tried not to talk about food. Jay told Eve about Linda. Now the marriage and the death did not seem real when he talked about them. He told her how Linda’s family had taken her body.

  “What did you do afterwards?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember two months at all. Or very little. There was Savannah and New Orleans and then I went back to Miami. Bill found me there.”

  “Did you drink a lot?”

  “Yes. But that wasn’t it. I went around in sort of a dream. Almost as if I’d had a knock on the head.”

  “Did you do things with women?”

  “No.”

  This was not exactly a lie. There was the little black-haired whore in New Orleans. He’d been drunk on absinthe. He remembered the way her ribs showed below her breasts. He’d gone with her to a hotel, but it hadn’t helped any.

  “I don’t believe you,” Eve said.

  “Really.”

  “My roommate at the convent told me all men did that when they felt bad.”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  “I’m glad, but I don’t believe you.”

  “Darling, I slept with hundreds of women. Two or three night.”

  “I know that’s not true either.”

  “Yes, it’s true. Doesn’t it make you jealous?”

  “No. I’m only jealous of Linda.”

  “She’s dead. You can’t be jealous of a dead girl.”

  “I am, though. Terribly. I hate her. No, I don’t. Not really. But I would like to be the only one.”

  “You are.”

  “No. I’m your second one.”

  “I’m your second one, too.”

  “Lucien doesn’t count. I told you. I never loved him.”

  “But he had you just the same.”

  “Yes. You don’t know how sorry I am about that.”

  “Don’t be. I don’t really care.”

  “You do. And so do I. I would like not to have known anyone but you. In their hearts most women feel that way.”

  “I don’t care. Truly.”

  “You’re good to me.”

  “I’m crazy about you. You’re so sweet and beautiful.”

  “I couldn’t be. No lipstick. No powder. Not even a proper bath.”

  “Your lips are beautiful.” He kissed her. “And so soft.”

  “Oh, darling!”

  “Please.”

  “Let’s wait until it’s dark. It’s so nice then.”

  “Now, and when it’s dark, too.”

  “Can’t you really wait?”

  “No.”

  “I’m so glad,” she said. “And so shameless.”

  “You’re so lovely.”

  The rain went away that night and in the morning it was cool and cloudy. They had camped on a broad trail that went northeast. The trail was pock-marked with the prints of elephants. Jay cut two pieces of meat from the last quarter of the buffalo calf and they ate and then took the trail. Jay walked ahead, watching for game. They had to have more meat soon. He wondered what the pygmies ate besides meat. He did not dare try the fruit and the mushrooms that grew in the forest. Even if they were not poisonous, they would probably make him sick. He did not want to be sick again.

  The path narrowed and in the dark trees ahead there were strange noises. They heard shrieks and chattering and the sound of moving branches, and a fetid odor grew stronger as they moved forward. The solid ceiling of leaves shut out the light. They came to a place where the earth was covered with the droppings of monkeys. The stench made Jay’s throat close up. The earth was streaked with yellow slime. They hurried on, not breathing, until they caught a band of chimpanzees, high in the trees, hidden by branches and leaves. The monkeys screamed and shouted and cried in the trees. There were several hundred of them. Jay could see the vegetation shake and twice he caught sight of moving gray bodies. He got out the Mauser and when a chimpanzee swung from a branch to the trunk of a slender tree he fired. There was an outcry and the chimpanzee disappeared in the leaves. The other monkeys became silent. They fled through the forest in silence.

  “I’m so glad you missed,” Eve said.

  “Are you?”

  “I could never have eaten one.”

  The trail wandered a great deal, but it kept returning to the northeast. Jay thought they had walked at least two miles during the morning. So far it was their best day. They were in a high part of the forest and the ground was firm under their feet. There were clear spaces between the trees. They saw many brown squirrels with sharp faces. These Would provide food, but they were so small Jay did not want to waste bullets on them. A little before noon they rested at the foot of a big tree, holding hands, happy in being able to touch again.

  “I’m glad you’re with me,” Jay said.

  “I’m glad, too.”

  “I’d be so scared alone.”

  “I’m only frightened at night,” she said. “And not badly then.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? I’d have held you.”

  “A lot of sleep we’d gotten, clinging to each other.”

  “It would have been fun.”

  “The only time I was terribly frightened,” she said, “was when I thought you were going to die.”

  “I wouldn’t think of dying.”

  “I’m never really frightened as long as I have you.” She smiled at him. “That sounds like a popular song, doesn’t it, darling?”

  “I am a fine trail breaker and pistol shot.”

  “You aren’t much good at either. But you’re very comforting to have around.”

  “You should have Mr. Palmer.”

  “He’s nice. He has such blue eyes. But I prefer you, dear.”

  “You’d better.”

  “I do have such faith in you. In the flood I kept saying to myself: ‘Jay will get us out; Jay will get us out.’ And you did.”

  “You had a lot more faith than I had.”

  “It was ghastly, wasn’t it?”

  “Very.”

  An emerald-colored spider with golden eyes crawled across Jay’s leg. He flicked it off with a finger. Then he tried to wave away the cloud of insects over his head.

  “I wonder if Lucien could have been caught in a flood,” Eve said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I was thinking about him this morning.”

  “Thinking what?”

  “How much happier I am here, lost and hungry and dirty, than I ev
er was with him.”

  “You’re very nice to say that.”

  “I am happy,” she said. “I wouldn’t have missed this. Not even if it ends with our dying.”

  “Don’t be morbid, sweet. We won’t die.”

  “Who cares, if you can die with the right person?”

  “Darling,” he said, “maybe I’m not the right person.”

  “You know you are.” She looked at him seriously. “You’re good. You’re tender. You love me. And I love you. Darling, Lucien was never tender.”

  “Maybe that’s because he was your husband.”

  “No,” she said. “It was because he was French.”

  “A lover would have been tender,” he said. “Couldn’t you have taken one?”

  “Yes. A hundred. But I didn’t want to. The closest was Lew Cable. And that was for a different reason. To get into the forest. And I couldn’t go through with it. You saw that. No lovers for me, darling.”

  “How about me?”

  “Jay, is that the way you feel?”

  “No.”

  “You’re my husband before everybody.”

  “Yes. And you’re my …” He hesitated.

  “Darling, you don’t have to say it.”

  “You’re my wife.”

  “You didn’t have to say it.”

  “I wanted to.” He touched her hand. “We’re man and wife.”

  “Oh, it’s such a nice feeling.”

  In the afternoon the trail suddenly gave out. It entered a small clearing, but they could not find where it went on. They walked around the clearing without finding a sign of it. The trail had just ended. It was very odd. They were tired and hungry. There was a grassy mound in the center of the clearing and they rested on it. The sky was covered with gray clouds. Jay decided the clearing would be as good a place as any to spend the night. He got up and started to gather wood for the fire. There were two matches left; enough for one more camp. He did not know what they would do after that. Eve stood on the grassy mound.