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Love Among the Cannibals

Page 11

by Wright Morris


  I thanked him.

  He shrugged and said, “De nada.” It is nothing. Another child ran to him and he put the first one down, picked up the second. He bounced the child on his arm and seemed to have forgotten what we had discussed. But he hadn’t. “As for the top—” he began.

  “The top?” I echoed.

  A hole had been cut in the top. With such a top, it was a mistake to lock the doors. They had gone through the top to see why the doors were locked. It being none of his business he had not looked through the hole himself.

  Still smiling, still holding the child, he turned from me to the house, bowed, and stopped smiling. I turned to see the Greek standing in the doorway, combing her hair. A celluloid dream of the tropics, she had slipped on her bra, her shorts, and put on the earrings with the green stones. She made quite an impression on us both, but on me it was favorable. Señor Eroza saw a woman who had failed to put on her clothes.

  “Her clothes are wet,” I said.. “She went for a swim.”

  A false smile on his face, he turned to gaze at the yard.

  “What are you saying?” said the Greek.

  “That you are starving,” I said. “That we would like to eat.” I turned back to him and said, “There is fruit?”

  Fruit, indeed, there was. It hung on the trees. He put down the child he held, spoke to her, and she ran off behind the house. A moment later she was back, with a papaya, and Señor Eroza placed it on a log block, the top pitted with feathers, and with a machete sliced it in half. He sliced the halves, then with his fingers scoured out the seeds, put a handful in his mouth. Through the crack between his teeth he spit them into the yard as he licked them clean. Papaya has a pungent odor. Some find it an acquired taste. The flesh is smooth as the lips of a woman and leaves a scent in your mouth. With the first bite of it, that is, I thought of the Greek. I gave her a slice, then carried two into the room where Mac stood at the wall with his electric razor. He had plugged the cord into the wall socket, but nothing had happened. He looked at me.

  “No curnt?” he said.

  “Any day now,” I said, “direct and indirect, hot and cold, but not right at this moment. Right now just papaya.”

  I held out a piece.

  “I don’t like it,” said Billie, and backed away.

  “You’ll learn to,” I said, sucking up the juice. “Filtered water with a flavor to it.”

  I stood there eating mine like a piece of watermelon.

  So did the Greek. She drew a brown hand across her wet mouth and wiped it on her new shorts.

  “Greek,” I said, matter-of-factly, “Señor Eroza has his Latin standards. A good woman should be heard but not seen. Not in shorts.”

  “Say I go without them?” she replied.

  “That wouldn’t bother him, but it would me.”

  “What does it mattah what he thinks?” Billie put in.

  “Weah not goin’ to live heah—ah we?”

  I went on eating papaya.

  “Man—” said Mac, “we gotta have curnt. We gotta have a shower. We gotta have a piano. We got work to do, man. Ain’t that right?”

  “Last night you asked me a question,” I said. “You said how much dough we got? The answer is not much.”

  “Man—” said Mac, retrenching, “we gotta have a piano.”

  “The best things in life are free,” I said, looking at my Greek, “but curnt, showers, and pianos are luxuries. I mean they cost money, like some women. You know what I mean?”

  He did. He looked at her and she said, “Ah didn’t come down heah to live like a niggah. Ah can live like a niggah right in Memfus, wheah I was born.”

  “Look, honey—” said Mac, “they ain’t really colored. She’s just one of these big, darky-lookin’ gringoes.”

  “A niggah mammy brought me up,” said Billie. “You-all can’t tell me nothin’ about niggahs.”

  “He probably wouldn’t let us stay if he knew that,” I said, and nodded my head toward Señor Eroza. “He probably thinks you’re mostly white, like the rest of us.”

  She didn’t hear that. She had suffered too much to suffer any more.

  “The chick’s hungry,” said Mac, “she’s gotta eat. She’ll feel better when she eats.”

  I turned to the Greek and said, “You like it here?”

  “I like it here,” she replied. Her mouth and all one side of her face had the Valspar sheen of papaya juice. A melon. A ripe melon of a woman. One ready to be sliced. She even smelled like a melon, thanks to that papaya, and I watched the pleats form in Billie Harcum’s upper lip. She had to curl her fingers up tight in her palms to get a grip on them.

  “Baby—” said Mac, and put his hand out toward her, but when a spark jumped the gap he jerked it back. “She’s gotta eat,” he repeated, mechanically. “She’ll feel better when she eats.”

  “We’ll go down to the beach,” I said, “then I’ll get a cab and go after some food.”

  “A cab?” said Mac. “Ain’t we got a car?”

  “Right now we ain’t.” I said. “We won’t have the use of the car for several days.”

  “Ah still have some things in the cah,” said Billie.

  “You mean, you did,” I said.

  “What you mean did?” said Mac.

  “Past tense of do. Señor Eroza says that our type of car is very popular. The wheels, that is. For the moment the wheels are on loan.”

  “Look—” said Mac.

  “We will when we go by,” I said, and walked back into our room, sat on the bed, and put on my socks and shoes. The Greek came in and stood there while I was lacing them up.

  “You mean that about the wheels?” she asked.

  I nodded. “I also mean it,” I said, standing up, “about the dough, that there isn’t much of it, and about the fact that the best things in life, my life, are still free.”

  I said that knowing that she might not take it, but she did. She took it, then said:

  “Do you like it here?”

  I took a moment to think. “I’m afraid,” I said, “I like it where you are. Curnt or no curnt, shower or no shower, piano or no piano, dough or no dough.”

  I’m also afraid that she took it for granted. Like everything else. She licked the papaya juice from her fingers, then took off the shorts—for Señor Eroza—and put on, for both of us, the skirt of her touring togs.

  “Do I need shoes?”

  “You should always have something to kick off.”

  She put on some shoes, then we went out on the porch where Mac and Billie were standing, Billie with her beach bag, her gem-framed dark glasses, her sunsuit with the price tag, and her coolie-type beach hat. Mac wore his Hawaiian shorts, his lisle socks, and a straw hat he had bought from a kid at one of the stop-lights. All the Erozas were down at their end of the porch, and Señor Eroza had a child in his lap. When he saw the Greek in her blouse and skirt he stood up, holding the child, and gave her a bow.

  “To the beach?” he inquired.

  “To the beach,” I replied, and we went down the slope, skidding on the gravel, edging along the ditch that would soon hold the pipe, and would then carry the water up to the shower, when it was attached. On the turn, where the street banked into the sun, the Greek had a trim of fire around her head and shoulders. When I looked back up the slope the trees seemed to smoke with heat. We went along single file, walking on our shadows, following the ditch at the side of the road, then we crossed it to where the mound of dirt blocked the street and looked at the car. All four wheels were gone. The rear end was still on the boxes they had used to hoist it up. The nose of the car was in the ditch as if trying to hide. We stood there beside it, shading our eyes, and the glare from the paint made it hard to look at it. I waited for someone to express how I felt, if I still felt anything.

  Mac said, “What’ll they do with just the wheels?”

  “Sell them back to us,” I answered.

  The moment I said it I knew they wouldn’t. They would keep the whe
els and add the car to them. The idea was so crazy, once it crossed my mind, I knew it was right. I had brought along my car keys but I didn’t need them to look inside. They had slit the convertible top open, neatly, and folded it back. The rear seat had been pulled forward so they could get into the back.

  “What did we have in the back?” I said.

  “The sound tape,” said Mac. “All the tape and the records.”

  “We’ll charge it to production,” I said. He didn’t reply. They had left one of the cushions, the bottles in the door bar, the radio in the dashboard, and the rearview mirror.

  “Ah will nevah even know what ah lost,” Billie Harcum said.

  We cut across the empty lot where a signboard advertised that a new modem hotel would go up there, any day now. Information on request. Any day now work would begin. At the sea wall we stopped and looked at the beach. The tide was out. A stretch of trackless sand sloped to the sea. Banked against the sea wall was a tangle of driftwood left by the tide.

  “Nobody here but us chickens,” said Mac, but he was wrong. On wooden posts, down the beach to the south, were two birds so big I thought they must be turkeys, until the near one, catching my eye, flapped along the beach like something learning to fly, his long raw neck exposed to the light. No one else saw him. I didn’t trouble to point him out. Out Over the sea, cruising in tandem, a school of pelicans went by like a flight of bombers. One of their number, as if shot down, folded his wings and dived into the sea. He reappeared a second later, gulped his catch, and rose into the air.

  “Make yourselves at home,” I said, “while I go to town and get us something to eat.”

  “Need me?” said Mac.

  “You stay with the chicks,” I replied.

  I watched them go down to where the sand was clean and a mist of spray blew off the water. Under the hair on his legs Mac was the color of the white sand. I watched the Creek drop her skirt, slip off her blouse, and then for my benefit turn and face me. A licking flame seemed to outline her body, smoke in her hair. I waved, then walked back across the empty lot to the street.

  I walked a half-mile, maybe farther, before I found a cab. He had driven out from town to park where some palm trees shaded the street, and there was water, in a nearby fountain, for washing his car. An elderly man, he knew a word or two of English, and answered all my comments with a flat okay. I told him I wanted food, lots of it, with some thermos jugs to keep it hot and cold. He let me sit in the car until he had finished washing it, which took some time. Above his rearview mirror he had a little Virgin of Guadalupe, lit up with electric candles. Dangling from the mirror he had a miniature saddle and a pair of boots.

  Since I had seen it last, Acapulco had grown, but looked and smelled the same along the water. Nor had it changed very much along the street he took me up. I bought a basket in one shop, two thermos jugs in another, and since the beach would fall under production I picked up a beach umbrella and four folding chairs. Then we rounded up the food. It was all prepared: it didn’t take time to cook but it took time to buy. It took time, that is, to bargain for. When he saw I didn’t seem to know the value of money my cabman took over, asked me to sit and watch his car while he took the money and went and bought what he thought was good for me. What he thought, that is, we could afford. Only the best was good enough for us—so you can see it took time. But by noon we had the grub rounded up. Two fat birds, whole; we had what they call molé; we had tortillas wrapped in swaddling bands, and I don’t know how, but we also had two buckets of beer, on ice. Something he described as gusanos de maguey I later found out to be maguey worms. I mean I found out too late. Mac ate them like potato chips.

  I let my cabbie fleece me for the fare as a further indication that I needed his protection, since it was plain— even to me—that I did. I mean, we all did. In a place like Acapulco a friend is a man who knows you are helpless and still likes you. He holds you up for a spell, then you hold him. He buys something from you, then you buy it back again. This flunky was my man Friday, he seemed to know how to live on the beach, and he helped me put up our new umbrella and the folding chairs. There was not a soul on the beach when we walked up. I had never before seen Mac in the water, but he had crawled into it to get out of the sun. He still had his hat on, his shirt on, and sat like a fat kid waistdeep in the surf, tossing rocks into a hole that Billie Harcum had scooped in the sand. Way out on the bay, maybe two hundred yards out, my Greek was floating like a rubber raft. When I yelled and waved the new umbrella she rolled over and swam in. The cabbie helped me pitch our camp on the beach, then he stood to one side, at a respectful distance, and waited to see what the rest of us looked like. I’m afraid we looked the same. I mean to say that we needed his help. I asked him to join us for a bite of lunch but he declined, first mentioning his family, then the fact that his work was so demanding that he had no time for such things. He moved back to the sea wall and sat on it watching us eat.

  We ate all of one turkey, we ate all of the molé, and we drank all of the beer. Just watching us eat had made the cabbie drowsy, and he had dozed off in the shadow of the sea wall. After his siesta I asked him if he could find the time to get us some more beer, and if he happened to know where we could rent a portable radio. He said, “You leave to me.” He said it in English, and in such a way that leaving it to him was not unusual. He had our number. And I was glad that we had his.

  I left it to him, and came back to the umbrella where the heat, the food, and the beer had us all pretty sleepy. We all dozed off till the frothy lick of the tide woke us up. We moved our camp back along the sea wall, collected driftwood for a fire in the evening, and when it cooled off both the Greek and I went in for a swim. While we were out on the bay the cabbie showed up with more iced beer and a radio. He didn’t stay to see what we would do with it, however, nor wait for me to come out of the water. From the sea wall he waved, his teeth white in his face, then he went off.

  A little before sunset we ate the second bird, what was left of the tortillas, and finished off the beer. We saved the thermos of coffee for breakfast in the morning, and as the beach darkened we lit our fire. Not so much for the heat or the light, as the company. We dug warm pits in the sand and lay there listening to the radio. There was a fire to the south, perhaps half a mile or so, and in the light on the water we could see the bathers, maybe hundreds of them, in the surf before the big tourist hotels. But no one had come within earshot of where we were. It seemed hard to believe that life was really worth living anywhere else. Lights ringed the bay, in the dusk so pale they didn’t give off light so much as collect it, holding it cupped like a match until it was needed after dark.

  We had come down to the beach to get out of the house, to get away from the bugs, the lizards on the ceiling, and the smell of urine and decay in the yard. We had come to the beach, that is, to talk over what next? Whether we would blow what little dough we had for a villa, one with curnt, clean sheets, a shower, and a piano —not any day now, nor tomorrow, but tonight. We had come down to the beach to make some sort of decision, but there had been no talk. Didn’t they care? Any more than I cared myself? In that villa on the slope we had cared—Miss Harcum had cared so much she could hardly stand it—but here on the strand, in the languorous air, we seemed to have found what we had come for. If we hadn’t known what we had come for, at least we recognized it. We had come to strip down like so many white shadows in the South Seas. Portable pagan love songs drifted to us from across the bay. On the lids of my eyes, my private Cinerama, I could see that tanned lover, Ramon Novarro, singing to that first dream of love to be packaged in a sarong.

  Had we come to the end of the perfect cliché? A love song with the languorous beat of the surf, a sea as warm and heady as a toddy, with the sun and the sand in the Kodachrome of heart’s desire? Whether we had come for it or not, we had it: it seemed to be what we wanted, and when we left the beach it was only to go to bed.

  The car, stripped of its chromy assurance, looked more
real by night than by day; it didn’t dissolve in a shimmer and we stood for a moment, silent, looking at it. During the day someone had made off with the radio. The chrome trim on the lights had been unscrewed, the bulbs and the reflectors removed, and the chrome handles had been taken from the doors. Mac had a look inside, and said, just in passing, that the seat they had left might be good to sleep on. So he carried the seat, and the Greek and I carried the folding chairs. We had learned about the grade and took our time going up the slope. Señor Eroza and his family were out on the porch, looking exactly as we had left them, except that a girl, rather than a boy, was now in his lap.

  “A good day?” he asked.

  “Wonderful,” I replied.

  Had I observed the car?

  “It is not good,” I said.

  “Not without wheels,” he said.

  “Not without wheels, lights, and door handles,” I replied. We smiled at each other with international understanding and good will. Then Señora Eroza, smoking a Delicado, stood in the center of the room, the lamp on her head, while Mac and I made a bed out of the two car seats. If she thought it a strange place for a man to sleep, she gave no sign. We set up a folding chair in such a manner that it would support his legs.

  We let them have the radio, and the lamp, then walked through the door to our own apartment, where we undressed in the dark, lay down on the bed. The moon had not yet come over the mountain, but the sky was light. In the yard, under the lean-to shelter, the Eroza family gossiped like chickens, and then, as if at a signal, the gossip stopped. I could feel in the frame of the bed the pounding of the surf. The tide was still rising. It would smooth over our tracks and hiss in our fire. I let my hand touch the body of the Greek, glide along the film of sweat on her arm to her shoulder, from there to the scruff of hair on her neck, which I gripped.

  “You know what day it is?” I said, since it had occurred to me that it must be the day on which I had met her. I had known her for a week. For a week, that is, I had not known her. “You know what day it is?” I repeated, and gave her head a shake, but the only sound from her was a whinny. That sound she made when I was about to kiss her, which I did.

 

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