Mosquitoes

by William Faulkner

  Major Ayers and Mrs. Maurier stared at Fairchild in quiet childlike astonishment. “Go on,” said Major Ayers at last, “you’re pulling my leg.”

  “No, no: ask Julius. But then, it is kind of hard for a foreigner to get us. We’re a simple people, we Americans, kind of childlike and hearty. And you’ve got to be both to cross a horse on an alligator and then find some use for him, you know. That’s part of our national temperament, Major. You’ll understand it better when you’ve been among us longer. Won’t he, Julius?”

  “Yes, he’ll be able to get us all right when he’s been in America long enough to acquire our customs. It’s the custom that makes the man, you know.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Major Ayers, blinking at him. “But there’s one of your customs I’ll not be able to acquire: your habit of eating apple tarts. We don’t have apple tarts at home, y’know. No Englishman nor Welshman nor Scot will eat an apple tart.”

  “You don’t?” repeated Fairchild. “Why, I seem to remember—”

  “But not apple tarts, old lad. We have other sorts, but no apple tarts. You see, years ago it was the custom at Eton for the younger lads to pop out at all hours and buy apple tarts. And one day a chap, a cabinet member’s son, died of a surfeit of apple tarts, whereupon his father had parliament put through a bill that no minor should be able to purchase an apple tart in the British dominions. So this generation grew up without them; the former generation died off, and now the present generation never heard of apple tarts.” He turned to the Semitic man. “Custom, as you just remarked.”

  The ghostly poet, waiting his chance, murmured, “Secretary of the Interior,” but this was ignored. Mrs. Maurier stared at Major Ayers, and Fairchild and the others all stared at Major Ayers’s florid bland face, and there was an interval of silence during which the hostess glanced about hopelessly among her guests. The steward reappeared and she hailed him with utter relief, ringing her little bell again commandingly. The others looked toward her and she passed her gaze from face to face.

  “Now, people, at four o’clock we will be in good bathing water. Until then, what do you say to a nice game of bridge? Of course, those who really must have a siesta will be excused, but I’m sure no one will wish to remain below on such a day as this,” she added brightly. “Let me see—Mr. Fairchild, Mrs. Wiseman, Patricia, and Julius will be table number one. Major Ayers, Miss Jameson, Mr.—Talliaferro—” Her gaze, came to rest on Jenny. “Do you play bridge, Miss—child?”

  Fairchild had risen with some trepidation. “Say, Julius, Major Ayers had better lie down a while, don’t you think? Being new to our hot climate, you know. And Gordon, too. Hey, Gordon, don’t you reckon we better lie down a while?”

  “Right you are,” Major Ayers agreed with alacrity, rising also. “If the ladies will excuse us, that is. Might get a touch of sun, you know,” he added, glancing briefly at the awning overhead.

  “But really,” said Mrs. Maurier helplessly. The gentlemen, clotting, moved toward the companionway.

  “Coming, Gordon?” Fairchild called.

  Mrs. Maurier turned to Gordon. “Surely, Mr. Gordon, you’ll not desert us?”

  Gordon looked at the niece. She met his harsh arrogant stare calmly, and he turned away. “Yes. Don’t play cards,” he answered shortly.

  “But really,” repeated Mrs. Maurier. Mr. Talliaferro and Pete remained. The nephew had already taken himself off to his carpenter’s saw. Mrs. Maurier looked at Pete. Then she looked away. Not even necessary to ask Pete if he played bridge. “You won’t play at all?” she called after the departing gentlemen, hopelessly.

  “Sure, we’ll come back later,” Fairchild assured her, herding his watch below. They descended noisily.

  Mrs. Maurier looked about on her depleted party with astonished despair. The niece gazed at the emptied companionway a moment, then she looked about at the remainder of the party grouped about the superfluous card tables. “And you said you didn’t have enough women to go around,” she remarked.

  “But we can have one table, anyway.” Mrs. Maurier brightened suddenly. “There’s Eva, Dorothy, Mr. Talliaferro and m—Why, here’s Mark,” she exclaimed. They had forgotten him again. “Mark, of course. I’ll cut out this hand.”

  Mr. Talliaferro demurred. “By no means. I’ll cut out. You take the hand: I insist.”

  Mrs. Maurier refused. Mr. Talliaferro became insistent and she examined him with cold speculation. Mr. Talliaferro at last averted his eyes and Mrs. Maurier glanced briefly toward the companionway. She was firm.

  * * *

  “Poor Talliaferro,” the Semitic man said. Fairchild led the way along the passage, pausing at his door while his gang trod his heels. “Did you see his face? She’ll keep him under her thumb from now on.”

  “I don’t feel sorry for him,” Fairchild said. “I think he kind of likes it: he’s always a little uncomfortable with men, you know. Being among a bunch of women seems to restore his confidence in himself, gives him a sense of superiority which his contacts with men seem to have pretty well hammered out of him. I guess the world does seem a kind of crude place to a man that spends eight hours a day surrounded by lace-trimmed crêpe de chine,” he added, fumbling at the door. “Besides, he can’t come to me for advice about how to seduce somebody. He’s a fairly intelligent man, more sensitive than most, and yet he too labors under the illusion that art is just a valid camouflage for rutting.” He opened the door at last and they entered and sat variously while he knelt and dragged from beneath the bunk a heavy suitcase.

  “She’s quite wealthy, isn’t she?” Major Ayers asked from the bunk. The Semitic man, as was his way, had already pre-empted the single chair. Gordon leaned his back against the wall, tall and shabby and arrogant.

  “Rotten with it,” Fairchild answered. He got a bottle from the suitcase and rose to his feet and held the bottle against the light, gloating. “She owns plantations or something, don’t she, Julius? First family, or something like that?”

  “Something like that,” the Semitic man agreed. “She is a Northerner, herself. Married it. I think that explains her, myself.”

  “Explains her?” Fairchild repeated, passing glasses among them.

  “It’s a long story. I’ll tell it to you some day.”

  “It’ll take a long story to explain her,” Fairchild rejoined. “Say, she’d be a better bet for Major Ayers than the laxative business, wouldn’t she? I’d rather own plantations than a patent medicine plant, any day.”

  “He’d have to remove Talliaferro, somehow,” the Semitic man remarked.

  “Talliaferro’s not thinking seriously of her, is he?”

  “He’d better be,” the other answered. “I wouldn’t say he’s got intentions on her, exactly,” he corrected. “He’s just there without knowing it: a natural hazard as regards anyone else’s prospects.”

  “Freedom and the laxative business, or plantations and Mrs. Maurier,” Fairchild mused aloud. “Well, I don’t know. . . . What do you think, Gordon?”

  Gordon stood against the wall, aloof, not listening to them hardly, watching within the bitter and arrogant loneliness of his heart a shape strange and new as fire swirling, headless, armless, legless, but when his name was spoken he stirred. “Let’s have a drink,” he said.

  Fairchild filled the glasses: the muscles at the bases of their noses tightened.

  “That’s a pretty good rejoinder to every emergency life may offer—like Squire Western’s hollo,” the Semitic man said.

  “Yes, but freedom—” began Fairchild.

  “Drink your whisky,” the other told him. “Take what little freedom you’ll ever get while you can. Freedom from the police is the greatest freedom man can demand or expect.”

  “Freedom,” said Major Ayers, “the only freedom is in wartime. Everyone too busy fighting or getting ribbons or a snug berth to annoy
you. Samurai or headhunters—take your choice. Mud and glory, or a bit of ribbon on a clean tunic. Mud and abnegation and dear whisky and England full of your beastly expeditionary forces. You were better than Canadians, though,” he admitted, “not so damned many of you. It was a priceless war, eh? . . . I like a bit of red, myself,” he confided. “Staff tabs worth two on the breast: only see the breast from one side. Ribbon’s good in peacetime, however.”

  “But even peace can’t last forever, can it?” the Semitic man added.

  “It’ll last a while—this one. Can’t have another war right off. Too many would stop away. Regulars jump in and get all the cushy jobs right off: learned in the last one, you know; and the others would all get their backs up and refuse to go again.” He mused for a moment. “The last one made war so damned unpopular with the proletariat. They overdid it. Like the showman who fills his stage so full chaps can see through into the wings.”

  “You folks were pretty good at war bunk yourselves, weren’t you?” Fairchild said. “War bunk?” repeated Major Ayers. Fairchild explained.

  “We didn’t pay money for it, though,” Major Ayers answered. “We only gave ribbons. . . . Pretty good whisky, eh?”

  * * *

  “If you want me to,” Jenny said, “I’ll put it away in my room somewheres.”

  Pete crammed it down on his head, holding his head tilted rigidly a little to windward. The wind was eating his cigarette right out of his mouth: he held his hand as a shield, smoking behind his hand.

  “It’s all right,” he answered. “Where’d you put it, anyway?”

  “Somewheres. I’d just kind of put it away somewheres.” The wind was in her dress, molding it, and clasping her hands about the rail she let herself swing backward to the full stretch of her arms while the wind molded her thighs. Pete’s coat, buttoned, ballooned its vented flaring skirts.

  “Yes,” he said, “I can just kind of put it away myself, when I want. . . . Look out, kid.” Jenny had drawn herself up to the rail again. The rail was breast high to her, but by hooking her legs over the lower one she could draw herself upward, and by creasing her young belly over the top one she leaned far out over the water. The water sheared away creaming: a white fading through milky jade to blue again, and a thin spray whipped from it, scuttering like small shot. “Come on, get back on the boat. We are not riding the blinds this trip.”

  “Gee,” said Jenny, creasing her young belly, hanging out over the water, while wind molded and flipped her little skirt, revealing the pink backs of her knees above her stockings. The helmsman thrust his head out and yelled at her, and Jenny craned her neck to look back at him, swinging her blown drowsy hair.

  “Keep your shirt on, brother,” Pete shouted back at the helmsman, for form’s sake. “What’d I tell you, dumbness?” he hissed at Jenny, pulling her down. “Come on, now, it’s their boat. Try to act like somebody.”

  “I wasn’t hurting it,” Jenny answered placidly. “I guess I can do this, can’t I?” She let her body swing back again at the stretch of her arms. . . . “Say, there he is with that saw again. I wonder what he’s making.”

  “Whatever it is he probably don’t need any help from us,” Pete answered. . . . “Say, how long did she say this was going to last?”

  “I don’t know—maybe they’ll dance or something after a while. This is kind of funny, ain’t it? They are not going anywhere, and they don’t do anything—kind of like a movie or something.” Jenny brooded softly, gazing at the nephew where he sat with his saw in the lee of the wheelhouse, immersed and oblivious. “If I was rich, I’d stay where I could spend it. Not like this, where there’s not even anything to look at.”

  “Yeh. If you were rich you’d buy a lot of clothes and jewelry and an automobile. And then what’d you do? Wear your clothes out sitting in the automobile, huh?”

  “I guess so. . . . I wouldn’t buy a boat, anyway. . . . I think he’s kind of good looking. Not very snappy-looking, though. I wonder what he’s making?”

  “Better go ask him,” Pete answered shortly. “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t want to know, anyhow. I was just kind of wondering.” She swung herself slowly at arms’ length, against the wind, slowly until she swung herself over beside Pete, leaning her back against him.

  “Go on and ask him,” Pete insisted, his elbows hooked over the rail, ignoring Jenny’s soft weight. “A pretty boy like him won’t bite you.”

  “I don’t mind being bit,” Jenny replied placidly. . . . “Peter— . . . ?”

  “Get away, kid: I’m respectable,” Pete told her. “Try your pretty boy; see if you can compete with that saw.”

  “I like peppy-looking men,” Jenny remarked. She sighed. “Gee, I wish there was a movie to go to or something.” (I wonder what he’s making.)

  * * *

  “What horsepower does she develop?” the nephew asked, raising his voice above the deep vibration of the engine, staring at it entranced. It was clean as a watch, nickeled and redleadeda latent and brooding power beneath a thin film of golden lubricating oil like the film of moisture on a splendid animal functioning, physical with perfection. The captain in a once-white cap with a tarnished emblem on the visor, and a thin undershirt stained with grease, told him how much horsepower she developed,

  He stood in a confined atmosphere oppressive with energy: an ecstatic tingling that penetrated to the core of his body, giving to his entrails a slightly unpleasant sensation of lightness, staring at the engine with rapture. It was as beautiful as a racehorse and in a way terrifying, since with all its implacable soulless power there was no motion to be seen save a trivial nervous flickering of rockerarms—a thin bright clicking that rode just above the remote contemplative thunder of it. The keelplates shook with it, the very bulkheads trembled with it, as though a moment were approaching when it would burst the steel as a cocoon is burst, and soar upward and outward on dreadful and splendid wings of energy and flame. . . .

  But the engine was bolted down with huge bolts, clean and firm and neatly redleaded; bolts that nothing could break, as firmly fixed as the nethermost foundations of the world. Across the engine, above the flickering rockerarms, the captain’s soiled cap appeared and vanished. The nephew moved carefully around the engine, following.

  There was a port at the height of his eye and he saw beyond it sky bisected by a rigid curving sweep of water stiff with a fading energy like bronze. The captain was busy with a wisp of cotton waste, hovering about the engine, dabbing at its immaculate anatomy with needless maternal infatuation. The nephew watched with interest. The captain leaned nearer, wiped his waste through a small accumulation of grease at the base of a pushrod, and raised it to the light. The nephew approached, peering over the captain’s shoulder. It was a tiny speck, quite dead.

  “What is it, Josh?” his sister said, breathing against his neck. The nephew turned sharply.

  “Gabriel’s pants,” he said. “What are you doing down here? Who told you to come down here?”

  “I wanted to come, too,” she answered, crowding against him. “What is it, Captain? What’ve you and Gus got?”

  “Here,” her brother thrust at her, “get on back on deck where you belong. You haven’t got any business down here.”

  “What is it, Captain?” she repeated, ignoring him. The captain extended his rag. “Did the engine kill it?” she asked. “Gee, I wish we could get all of ’em down here and lock the door for a while, don’t you?” She stared at the engine, at the flickering rockerarms. She squealed. “Look! Look how fast they’re going. It’s going awfully fast, isn’t it, Captain?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the captain replied. “Pretty fast.”

  “What’s her bore and stroke?” the nephew asked. The captain examined a dial. Then he turned a valve slightly. Then he examined the dial again. The nephew repeated his question and the captain told him her bore a
nd stroke.

  “She revs up pretty well, don’t she?” the nephew suggested after a while.

  “Yes, sir,” the captain answered. He was busy doing something with two small wrenches, and the nephew offered to help. His sister followed, curious and intent.

  “I expect you’d better let me do it alone,” the captain said, courteous and firm. “I know her better than you, I expect. . . . Suppose you and the young lady stand over there just a little.”

  “You sure do keep her clean, Captain,” the niece said. “Clean enough to eat off of, isn’t she?”

  The captain thawed. “She’s worth keeping clean. Best marine engine made. German. She cost twelve thousand dollars.”

  “Gee,” the niece remarked in a hushed tone. Her brother turned upon her, pushing her before him from the room.

  “Look here,” he said fiercely, his voice shaking; when they were again in the passage. “What are you doing, following me around? What did I tell you I was going to do if you followed me any more?”