Private House

by Anthony Hyde

  Gently, so as not to alert him, she rolled over. And she had been right, more or less: he was by the window, though not reading—he was watching the sun go down—and he must already have dried himself, for a towel was loosely knotted around his hips. It was a pleasure to watch him unobserved, to have him all to herself, and she lay perfectly still. Even better, the towel now slipped open, dropping to his feet, but he stayed as he was, looking toward the sea, so that the turn of his body revealed his tough, lean strength.

  During the past week she’d often thought of the absurdity of race, but now his negritude had her catching her breath; he was wonderful like this. Besides, certain small differences, to be accounted for that way, had their attraction. For example, Bailey had very little body hair, so that his skin, catching the light, was almost iridescent, black and bronze, like that old statue of Poseidon they’d pulled up from the sea: she’d seen it in Athens. Even his pubic hair was very light, and looking at him now, with the turn of his hips drawing her attention precisely there, she recalled the pleasurable surprise his testicles had given her, the wrinkled skin tightening against her tongue, their softness in her mouth.

  Either in sympathy with this thought, or the descending towel, a drip of his semen now slipped out of her and trickled around her thigh. So far as that was concerned, she’d told him nothing. Every time she was about to speak—she could feel the words forming now—she’d think again. After all, it was unlikely she was pregnant. And it might upset him. He might see it as putting pressure on him, although it was hard to imagine, under the circumstances, what that might mean. Still, that was what she wanted to avoid, above all else. She understood that now. She was doing this because she wanted to do something free, not free as in “free trade” or “freedom,” but free of charge, for nothing, truly free, asking absolutely nothing in exchange, not even love. How she hated money, she thought, and how strange she should have learned that here . . . except it wasn’t, since here it was either worthless or worth everything.

  “What are you looking at?” she finally said.

  He turned right around. This left him silhouetted against the window, and his features were lost in shadow. What was he thinking? What was he feeling? “I’m not sure. I keep meaning to check with a compass, what’s actually out there. Florida? Africa? Mexico?”

  “But somewhere else, you mean?”

  “Yeah, I guess that is what I mean.”

  She closed her eyes. All she could think of was that she was leaving tomorrow and he was staying behind. She opened her eyes and smiled at him. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. You feel it more because I’m leaving. You are like a caged lion, standing there.”

  His smile was a bright flash in the dark. “An old con, more like it.”

  He had turned back to the window, and the light fell on him again. She remembered what Lorraine had called him, a very fine man. Yes, he was; that was how she must think of him. He was certainly very attractive, she thought, and she’d already worked out that his lack of attachment was only another sign of his alienation, another proof that he could not be a Cuban. But of course, after she left, he would have other women. That was inevitable. She had told him she would be coming back, but had felt that he didn’t believe her, which had upset her until she’d realized that his own choices were so limited that it was hard for him to imagine someone putting such a plan into effect. Life, for him, could only go on. Asking him to believe her promise was almost an imposition, demanding an impossible leap of faith; and perhaps it was one more reason not to tell him. And yet it was hard not to. Perhaps he didn’t care—it didn’t make any difference—and she wanted him to know. But she was only causing him pain, she thought. He’d almost said that, tracing a finger along her breast. “The trouble is, with you, I start to play what if—and where does that get me? You start thinking you got choices and that’s fatal.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  Bailey picked up the towel, retied it, and went to answer. Mathilde could hear him talking to the woman next door, Señora Luna, to whom she’d already been introduced. And in fact she called out, “Buenas tardes, señora.” But then Bailey stuck his head around the small partition that made the entrance to his apartment. “It’s your jinetera friend, Adamaris.”

  “Oh, God.” She said this reflexively, but she’d been wondering what had happened to her.

  “She probably wants to say goodbye.”

  “No, that’s not what she wants.” Bailey had not expressed quite the enthusiasm for the cell phone she might have liked, but she was determined to give it to him; it would at least give them a chance of staying in touch. All the same, she began getting out of bed—Adamaris was the kind of person you always grumbled about and pretended to resent, but even if you didn’t like her, you felt attached to her; perhaps you had no choice. Making a face, she called back, “Tell Señora Luna I’ll come.”

  She dressed. The tail of Bailey’s shirt coped with his excess. She didn’t bother with her bra: if it confirmed Señora Luna’s suspicions, so much the better—and Mathilde had decided that the señora, who kept a maternal eye on Bailey, was probably on her side in any case. She was a short, dumpy woman with huge hips and a waddle: Mathilde followed her down the hall to her own little home, where the telephone was placed just inside the door, presumably in recognition of its semi-communal status.

  “Mathilde?”

  “Yes, Adamaris. What do you want?” But then she relented—with Adamaris you always did. “It is very nice to talk to you.”

  “Yes . . .” Her voice, heard afresh, struck Mathilde with its strange, exaggerated flatness—Yaaz or Saayz: English with a purely American accent. “Your friend Lorraine has called me.”

  “Lorraine?”

  “You are surprised. Yes . . . So was I. Is possible she has this number?”

  “Of course. She has my cell phone.”

  “You must understand. My number, I mean, the number I gave you—”

  “But yes. It’s in the directory. Bailey’s number and the number you gave me are the only numbers there.”

  “So . . . is possible.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She is on the Malecón and she is planning to go in the water. She did not want to disturb you. She says this many, many times. She asked, is it possible that I bring for her a suitswim or a towel.”

  “A swimsuit—a towel ?”

  “Yes. I think so. . . . Do you understand? She was thinking, she would—undress? Have all her clothes off ? Then she would wrap this on her.”

  “This is crazy, Adamaris.”

  “This is crazy, I thought so too. So, I call you.”

  “Did she sound—”

  “No, no, very calm. Very polite you know. She said that you and your friend were together and she did not want to upset you. So, she is calling me. But she tells to me, she has been listening to Yemaya, and Yemaya says, ‘Go in the ocean.’ You know who is Yemaya?”

  “No. Yemaya?”

  “The god of the sea for the blacks. I think she tells me a joke, you see, and I ask her, ‘What is Yemaya sounding like?’ and she say, very calmly, ‘She sounds like the inside of a shell, but, if you listen hard, you understand what she is saying.’ Is true. I mean, is true, this is what she says.”

  “Adamaris, where she is exactly?”

  “All right. Yes . . . she said, she is on the Malecón, a long way. That’s all.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I am in my apartment, which is not too far from Malecón. You must tell me. Should I go?”

  “Yes. Go. I will go too—hurry. If you get there first, don’t let her go into the water. You must stop her, Adamaris.”

  “Of course, if this is possible. But I must tell you—”

  “Hurry.”

  As Mathilde hung up the phone, she hovered on the verge of a response to which she knew she had every right. Damn her. On my last day. But this instant passed so quickly it was barely recorded. Lorraine was going to dro
wn herself. Mathilde went very still. She was afraid; but beyond her fear was a deeper urgency. She was all at once certain that her fate and Lorraine’s were intertwined, and that her own life and projects, as much as Lorraine’s, now hung in the balance. And Mathilde now had the superstitious sense that her breach of faith—her failure to tell Lorraine the whole truth about what had happened when she’d followed Almado—might be the cause of what was happening now. Yemaya. Yemaya . . . And what chilled her blood was the image of Lorraine, that day at the beach, swimming in the sea. She was entirely at ease in the water, she was “in her element”—it was the same in French. There, regardless of what she felt elsewhere, she was not afraid, and so might find the courage to—

  But that was unthinkable. It must not happen. She turned, shouting “Bailey!” and discovered that he was standing behind her, his eyes a little wide and questioning.

  “I don’t get it. About Yemaya—the god?”

  “Yemaya is telling her to go into the sea. She’s on the Malecón.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “She’s not crazy, she’s not going to kill herself.”

  “Bailey—”

  He shook his head again. “It can’t be. She wants a towel? You don’t want a towel if you’re going to drown yourself.”

  “But you can’t be sure!”

  “Well, there’s no point standing here.”

  They had to wait for the elevator—now creakily repaired—and rode down in silence. Bailey’s street, with the shadows of the buildings closing in, was like a telescope, the Malecón, and the sky above the sea, a far-off bright patch: but they were looking through the wrong end and it seemed miles away. The growing darkness and the dangers of the ravaged roadway, and their mood, combined to keep them quiet; but then Bailey said, “Adamaris is crazy too”—as though he’d been doing a silent inventory of women along these lines.

  Mathilde only nodded. They kept walking, it seemed forever. “You’re angry,” she said at last.

  “At myself, a little.”

  “Don’t be. This isn’t your fault.”

  Finally, ahead, the sky opened up, spreading out in a fan: watered silk—rose shot through with lilac and gold. On the broad street, scooters and cars made time-lapse streaks through the gloom: they dashed across, reached the sidewalk on the far side, and Bailey kept right on, one high step onto the breakwater wall.

  He shaded his eyes; but the wall bulged out ahead in a curve, blocking most of the shore beyond.

  “We must get a taxi.”

  He shook his head. “We might miss her.”

  Mathilde saw he was right as they hurried on. The sidewalk was very wide, the wall fairly high: from the street you wouldn’t see down to the water. The shore varied. Sometimes the water came right up against the wall, elsewhere tumbled rocks and boulders made points and little promontories. Mathilde was breathing hard to keep up when Bailey once more jumped onto the wall to see. This time he waved. “Adamaris,” he said. “I think she must have found her.”

  They began to run, and Bailey pulled ahead; by the time Mathilde came up to Adamaris—who had indeed brought a towel; it was folded over her arm like a waiter—he was up on the wall, looking toward the water. He reached down, and pulled Mathilde up beside him. “There,” he said.

  The Malecón had swung out here, making a point, and black rocks pushed it out farther still, twenty yards or so from the breakwater itself. But immediately the shoreline curved sharply back, so that here they were almost looking back to the city, across a cove. The sea, near the wall, was lost in dark shadow; but then, farther out, this darkness spread into a rosy purple overlaid by the light that flashed on the waves, moving in a low, gentle, regular swell, lozenges of gold and turquoise and emerald, like the suits of Harlequin or Mezzetino or Scaramouche. Lorraine was swimming across this pattern, embroidering it with a silver thread and then—perhaps as she turned her head to take a breath—flashing like a sequin. She was already very far out.

  “My God,” said Mathilde. “We must get the police.”

  Adamaris leaned across the wall. She pointed. “You see there? All of her clothes.”

  They were near the water, folded on top of a rock, weighted down with her bag. “Bailey, look. That’s a note. Oh my God.”

  He stepped down, on the other side of the wall. The rocks, all very round, were like wet black cannonballs and incredibly slippery. Mathilde almost fell, going over; and then, a few yards from the wall, the sea came over the rocks, in a channel, cutting off the higher mound beyond as an island—and this time she did fall, soaking herself and bruising her leg. Getting up, she called back to Adamaris, “You must get the police! We must have a boat!”

  Bailey clambered over the rocks ahead of her, moving in a crouch, one hand almost brushing the ground to keep himself balanced. The rocks were thrown up without rhyme or reason, treacherously, and Mathilde fell again; and Bailey almost went down himself. When she finally got to the rock—it was a steep climb from here down to the water—he was squatting, with the note in his hand. He handed it to her: NO DINERO IN BAG!

  Mathilde, frustrated, blurted, “Oh, what is she doing!”

  She looked toward the water; standing up—almost losing her balance—she could see Lorraine, not so easily from here because they were lower down, but it was plain she was still swimming out; and too far to shout. She looked back to the wall. Adamaris had disappeared, but from here you couldn’t see the sidewalk or the road, only the wall and the curved standards of the lamps. They weren’t lit yet, though the light was fading fast. Bailey said nothing; he was taking off his clothes. As she understood what he was doing, she said, “You can’t do this!”

  He was in his shorts, boxers, which were white and seemed loose on his lean, hard hips. “We have to get her,” he said.

  “You’re not that good a swimmer!” In a crouch, he picked his way over the rocks, down toward the water—Mathilde began to follow. “Bailey, I’m a better swimmer than you are, you know that—”

  He was shaking his head, looking out to sea. “Stay here and keep your eye on us. It’ll be dark soon. Don’t lose us whatever you do.”

  “Bailey—”

  But he’d already dived, a shallow dive but quite neat, better than he usually did; and he thought well enough of it to stay under the water, breasting along, then surfaced smoothly, falling into his crawl. She was right, he wasn’t a great swimmer, he’d only learned after he’d come here, and yet he loved it, the pleasure of the smooth over-rushing water on his back, the weight of it holding him up as he reached—remembering to keep his elbow high—and stroked back toward his hip, finding the rhythm of it, marking it with his little kick, letting it work into his body and his body work into the water, never straining, always keeping your breathing easy, so you almost put yourself to sleep. After a certain point, his shorts slipped over his hips, but he didn’t want to stop to take them off, so he dove again, letting the water tug them over his thighs and his legs, until only one ankle still held them, and he only had to straighten his foot, and then he was free. Now the water streamed over him and he felt the full length of himself, his shape given him by the sea, from which he emerged, only now becoming aware of the larger scene he was swimming in. Looking first right and then left, he sought for landmarks, and then he rolled over for three strokes on his back, finding the shore, Mathilde so much smaller at the water’s edge, shading her eyes to keep him in sight. And rolling back, he changed to the breaststroke, the last stroke he had learned, trying to catch a glimpse of Lorraine. She was still far ahead, and enough to his left to make him alter course, but when he had done that, he slowed, back in the breaststroke, to keep her in view. She was swimming strongly, purposefully, as if—supposing she wanted to drown herself—she thought there was only one particular spot where you could properly do it. It was puzzling. He slipped back into his crawl. What was she doing? What was she thinking and feeling? But now, as he stroked along, it was his own feelings that filled him, and what he felt was
release, freedom. It was a feeling he often felt in the water, it was the pleasure swimming gave him. You were in your own world, free of that other one. But what he felt now was more intense, a fierce exhilaration. He had cast off his cares, there was no longer what if ? only now. What was out there? Florida—Africa. Where could the Gulf Stream take him? If he could only keep swimming, he would finally reach freedom, he’d be free not only of his past and the island, but from the absurdity they represented, the imposition of meaning upon the world. Was this what Lorraine had discovered? Was she swimming so strongly toward the same goal? His strength was now renewed with each stroke, he could swim for miles on this purple sea, in this golden light, for miles, forever. All around him was the great world, the sea rippling with the colours of the greater universe beyond, and the sky drawing down, full of gentleness, and peace, and over there lay the line of the horizon, golden with glory, beckoning, and he felt a call, hurry up, hurry up! He wanted to shout with joy. Yes, it was his world, they couldn’t take that away from him, this light, this sky, this darkness, like the night settling on the African plain he had come from, he and everyone else, if they only had the strength to admit it. But to hell with them. He was going home. All he had to do was keep swimming, and he’d get there, soon, soon.

  “Bailey? Bailey! Where are you going?” The voice calling him was mildly out of breath, and so all the more shrilly feminine—perhaps despite itself, for now it dropped a tone. “I’m over here. This way.”

  Bailey stopped—and was all at once exhausted. He began gasping for breath. A hot flush passed over his skin; and then he felt cold. And all he could hear was a roaring in his ears and the lapping of the water below.