Love, Let Me Not Hunger

by Paul Gallico

  Deeter said, “Maybe you could find work somewhere for a couple of days.”

  “Don’t worry,” Rose said.

  Deeter blinked. “Okay, then, if it’s all right with the others. What do you say?”

  Toby said, “I suppose it’s a good idea. What do you think they’ll fetch?”

  “Between six and seven hundred quid,” Deeter replied. “Enough to get us all off the hook.”

  Janos laughed. “Hokay, hokay. You bring back money. We buy meat. It’s hokay with me.”

  Mr. Albert nodded, and wondered what it was Rose knew that they did not.

  Deeter said, “I’ll start off in the afternoon. I figure to give an exhibition or two on the way up and pass the hat. That’ll get us there. I ought to be back in about a week with any luck.”

  Later, Toby asked Rose, “What did you take a bite out of Deeter for like that? What do you know?”

  Rose said, “He’s yellow, just like you said. He’s afraid of Janos. That’s why he’s going.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a good idea, him selling those horses? It’ll serve Marvel right.”

  Rose did not reply. She could not bring herself to say to Toby what she felt about Deeter. Nor could she see under the circumstances that it mattered, except that in the long run the camp would be a better place without him.

  They walked with Deeter as far as the cross-roads connecting with the main turnpike north of the far side of the town to bid him goodbye. And the gaily caparisoned octette of Liberty horses on a lead line in tow of a cowpuncher in a ten-gallon hat mounted on a creamy-eyed palomino horse drew hardly a stare from the townspeople, so used by then were they to have the remnants of the circus in their midst.

  The horses were dressed in all their finery. Toby and Deeter had worked all the night before oiling the harness and polishing the brass, as well as grooming them, and they wore their red, white, and blue head-dresses proudly and smartly, and stepped out as confidently as though they were in the ring. Over their breast-bones were affixed their metal number shields, consecutive from one to eight. It was the number-two horse, a chestnut mare, that Janos had slaughtered, but the spare horse carried for emergencies, a bay, had dropped automatically into the number-two slot and the team was now complete.

  Deeter had donned the old, stained cowboy hat he wore when he presented his trick horse, and his coiled lariat was at the saddle horn. He wore leather chappareras, and a pistol belt and holster with his long-barrelled Colt in it. His two saddlebags were bulging.

  The cross-roads were situated on the flat plain half a mile outside Zalano, and there was an inn located close by. It was called Las Flores. Far from being in the style of the old Spanish hostels or paradores furnished by the government for the tourist trade, it was a modern, neon-signed roadhouse, strangely out of place in this country. Painted in red and blue, it had a rakish, saucy air about it, somewhat like a chorus girl finding herself in the midst of a group of dowagers. There was a glassed-in verandah restaurant, and at one end a sign which read BAR. The flowers from which it took its name must have been the wisteria which spilled down from the roof, but otherwise it stood tree-less and stark, an incongruity against the Spanish landscape.

  Deeter halted his horse to bid them goodbye before turning into the road north. And then when he had done so they all found that none of them had very much to say to one another. Finally, Deeter grinned at Janos and said, “I’m glad I missed you, you little bastard. I wouldn’t a second time.” Which sent the dwarf into peals of loud laughter.

  Toby said, “Take it easy.”

  And Rose, with her hands clasped behind her back, looked at him levelly and said, “Goodbye, Fred.”

  Deeter mocked, “Don’t say goodbye. Say au revoir” and wondered whether she knew, and if she did, why she did not say so and try to prevent his going.

  A car containing four men drew up at the roadhouse down by the bar section. They got out and made as though to enter, but stopped when they saw the curious group: the eight cockaded Liberty horses, the cowboy and the palomino, the dwarf, the old man in a rusty frock coat, the boy, and the girl. And they stood there with their backs to the inn, watching them and discussing the sight in Spanish in low tones. But it was neither the horses nor the men which arrested their gaze, but the figure of Rose. She was wearing blue jeans and a blue cotton blouse, and her coppery hair, which had grown longer, was shining in the strong sunlight. She stood a little apart from the four men, feminine, slender, and provocative.

  “Don’t worry,” Deeter said, and swung his horse around. “Scrounge for yourselves till I get back. Maybe now that they’ve dropped the case against him, Sam will show up. Keep your shirts on. So long!” He touched two fingers to the brim of his Texan sombrero, lightly shook the reins of the palomino and was off at the gentle, loping trot that would not strain the horses but would eat up the miles. The eight Liberty horses followed, jingling merrily.

  They stood there watching them up the straight road until they were lost in the distant heat haze, Rose still standing somewhat apart, pulling at her full lower lip. Toby turned and regarded her for a moment, and then said curiously, “What are you thinking of, Rose?”

  “That he’ll never come back again,” she said.

  “Oh, he wouldn’t do anything like that,” said Mr. Albert.

  Toby and Janos said nothing to this, and they started off on the way back to the finca.

  The four men were still standing and watching. They were city chaps from the tight fit of their clothes and wore sporty sideburns. One of them sent a long wolf whistle after the girl and grinned, watching the movement of her buttocks as she walked away with her companions, without ever turning around. Then they went into the bar.

  Rose was, of course, quite right, and had known it from the very first moment that Deeter had made his proposal. The American reached Madrid in five days with all his horses in excellent shape. He took that long because he paused on the route to give brief exhibitions in the squares of small villages, passed the hat and was gone before the police arrived to question his bona fides.

  In Madrid, he went to the Circo Español, the capitals permanent circus establishment, where he sold the Liberty horses for the equivalent of £600, which capital he pocketed. He then put himself and Marlene Dietrich on a train for Berlin where he at once connected with a job in the Wintergarten, and later with the Zirkus Hagenbeck.

  But all those who stayed behind in Zalano only found out a long time afterwards, since he never made any attempt whatsoever to communicate with them.

  C H A P T E R

  1 8

  When they had returned to the encampment after Deeter’s departure, they had all drifted down to the menagerie to check once more upon the condition of the animals, but unconsciously, perhaps, even more to see what things were like minus the presence of the cowboy.

  In a sense, it was a weight lifted from all of their spirits, yet at the same time his absence left a gap, for whatever his failings, his cynicisms and his mockery, he was strong, tough, and courageous and able to speak enough of the language to help them get by. No matter what, he had been their captain and they knew that all of them would now be called upon for a greater effort and an assumption of further responsibility. The three men saw it as a short-term effort until he should return. Rose had no such illusions. She had said nothing further about her certainty that he was planning to run out on them. She had been glad to see him go. She was unaware of how she was collecting, tightening, and protecting the little world into which she had tumbled.

  As always, their appearance down by the menagerie set off a hysteria of hope among the hungry animals that the humans upon whom they so depended had come to feed them. The lion, the tiger, and the panther crushed their bodies against the bars. The bear sat up ridiculously on its haunches and begged, gesturing with his paws, his tongue lolling out from one side of his mouth. The monkeys thrust their thin, spidery arms from their cages, the small, black hands opening and closing upo
n air. Judy lifted her trunk and trumpeted shrilly, raising her free foreleg hopefully, and her little mouth, too, was open to receive that which they had not to give.

  Toby said to the elephant, “Only a few days more, old girl, and then you’ll be rolling in hay.”

  Rose turned upon him. “We can’t wait that long. Fred was right. We’ve got to find jobs right away. Something—anything.”

  Mr. Albert said eagerly, “That’s it! We can all get work till he comes back. Maybe I could get a job in a garage or something. I used to be a pretty good mechanic.”

  “Nobody wants an old man,” Toby said cruelly.

  Rose thought it was time to remind him. Toby deserved it. “Don’t you know,” she said, “he’s never coming back?”

  “What!” exclaimed Mr. Albert. “Mr. Marvel not coming back? He’s got to. They’re his, ain’t they?”

  “I don’t know about Mr. Marvel,” Rose said. “I mean Deeter—after he’s sold the horses.”

  Toby flared up. “How do you know? Did he say anything to you? Why didn’t you tell us? I wouldn’t have let him go. I’d have gone myself.” She irritated him with her cool prescience, the more so since he was aware that he had thought of it and had known it, too, and then had let it happen because he was not old enough or strong enough or tough enough to prevent it. Being young isn’t everything, Deeter had said. When would he ever make his escape from that awful truth?

  “We can work,” Rose said. “I’ll get a job.”

  Toby was still angry. “You!” he shouted. “What could you do?”

  Rose replied, “Something.” She nodded towards Judy. “If we don’t get some food for her, she’s going to go. Jackdaw told me if they’re not fed properly they seem to be all right and all at once they fall down and die.”

  Judy knew she was being discussed by Rose and thrust out her trunk straight as an iron bar in her direction, squealing and shivering with rage.

  Rose stuck out her tongue and said, “You big stupid balloon! Why do you hate me like that?”

  Toby said, “You played a dirty trick on her once. Anyway she’s got it in for women.”

  Rose held out her arms to the elephant, but from a prudent distance, and her mouth once more formed itself into that wry smile that changed her face into something delightful and enchanting. “I could love you so if you’d only let me. You’re such a big silly.”

  Toby looked at her curiously. Love was a word that was always close to Rose’s lips. She loved this and she loved that—she loved all the animals, and at night when he embraced and crushed her, expending his passion, she would gasp and whisper breathlessly in his ear, “Oh, Toby, I love you!”

  He had never told her that he loved her, even as a lie, for she had given herself to him without any promises, pledges, or assurances, and anyway he thought he did not love her in the sense that some day he would love and respect one of his own kind.

  And yet from the night that she had first come to him they had gradually assumed a life together and a relationship that was almost like being in love with that kind of girl, for throughout Rose gave him the illusion that somehow she was or could be.

  The sense of sin sat heavily upon Toby. It was one thing to give a quick jump to one of the avid town girls like his brothers did, and then decamp, never to see them again. But he was living with a girl, using her nightly and falling into little tricks and habits of domesticity. It was not difficult, for Rose in love was gentle, kind, yielding, worshipping, sweet, and admirable. She thought about him, fussed over him, and looked after his needs, and, in fact, he was sharp enough to see, was a better wife to him than many of those shrill women he had seen travelling with the circus in the married state.

  This enabled him then somehow to negate the sin and obliterate the background from which she had come. She was fresh and clean, as clean as his sisters, as his own family, and he had not been able to discover any dirt within her mind. She was simple, decent, and generous, and he was contented with her. Why, if one had not seen her retiring nightly into the wagon of Jackdaw Williams and did not know what the filthy old man had been doing to her, the same thing as he, Toby, was doing now, and that she had been letting him, one would almost imagine that she was a good girl—his girl.

  And so, because he needed this imagining, he made it so and obliterated Jackdaw Williams too, and all those he thought must have gone before. Thus he could even permit himself little attentions and kindnesses to her in return for the manhood she had given him and the pride. He was not certain he believed her story that she had left Jackdaw Williams of her own volition. The clown might have chucked her out at the last minute. But there was no doubt that he, Toby, had taken her away from Deeter under Deeter’s nose and made the American smart.

  All of these illusions buoyed him up and satisfied him, and he looked with pleasure upon the expression that curled the corners of her mouth as she said she could love his elephant, even though the great beast hated her.

  The next morning they went forth to canvass for jobs as best they could, knowing they were handicapped both by the lack of language as well as the increased poverty that had come to the district through the recent disaster. Rose went by herself, Toby and Janos together. It was agreed that Mr. Albert should stay behind to see to the animals, to keep them as clean as might be, tend their sores, give them water, and by his presence as well render them companionship and hope, for this was all there would be to keep them alive unless they succeeded in their quest.

  That evening when they returned they had to confess that they had failed. Rose had been from one shop to another but always encountered the language barrier. The only skill she had to offer—sewing—was not wanted at the time. Business was bad; no extra hands were needed.

  They found Mr. Albert on a camp stool before the cages, his bowler hat between his knees, his spectacles reposing therein, and he was dabbing at his eyes with a bit of rag. The dwarf deer was dead; so were two of the rhesus monkeys and the African wart-hog.

  “They died this midday,” he reported, “or maybe old Warty was dead sooner. Tiny here (this was the name of the dwarf deer) sucked on my thumb like it was a nipple. If I had had a little milk I could have saved it.” He arose, put on his spectacles and the black bowler and shuffled off in the direction leading behind the cages. He said, “There’s a place back here where the dirt ain’t so hard where we could make a sort of a cemetery.”

  “Ho,” Janos said, “that’s what you think. Come back. We ain’t needing no cemetery. My doks helping to bury them.”

  Toby looked at the little clown with disgust on his young face, his mouth curling and his eyes filling with contempt. Monkeys were almost like babies, even when they were dead, and there would not be much on them.

  But Rose said, “They’ll all share, then.” She went to the tiger’s cage and said softly, “Meat, Rajah!” She turned to the others, crying, “Come on then, what are we waiting for? Give me a knife. I saw how Fred skinned a horse. We can do it the same way. Let’s get on with it.”

  Toby said, “It won’t feed my elephant.”

  Rose said, “We’ll feed your elephant. I’ll find a job tomorrow.” She said it with all the fierceness of a promise sworn upon a crucifix.

  Janos and Toby did find work the next day with a farmer. They came in with blistered hands and aching backs and a total of one hundred and sixty pesetas between them, at the rate of eighty pesetas each for a nine-hour day. Another tragedy had taken place during the time they were away. Pockets, the kangaroo, had succumbed and Mr. Albert was inconsolable, for she had been his particular pet.

  At six o’clock Rose had not yet returned. But at seven a farmer with a wain drawn by two mules pulled up to the tober, and began pitching bales of alfalfa hay to the ground to the weight of some three hundred kilos.

  “Holy Jesus!” Toby said. “It’s for us. From you? From you?” he shouted at the man in English loudly, and then pantomimed to try to make him understand what he was asking.

 
The farmer shook his head and said, “La Señorita cabeza roja.” He dumped the last of the hay, cracked up the mules with his whip, and rumbled off.

  “Christ!” Toby shouted. “Rose must have struck it rich! Here, old man, help me.” They dragged two bales of the hay over to the elephant who began to squeal and twitter wildly, flapping her ears, bobbing, and rocking and swaying, her eyes twinkling rapidly and greedily. They cut the binding, and in a moment the big beast was stuffing herself with great gurgles of joy. They dragged others to the horse shed.

  It was dusk, just before the last of the summer light faded, that Rose returned, walking slowly and thoughtfully up the road, and they hailed her arrival: “Did you send the hay?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve got yourself a job?”

  “Yes.”

  “It must be a good one.”

  “Yes.”

  “Come in,” Toby said, “you must be hungry.”

  “No,” Rose replied, “I’ve eaten.”

  “Janos and I made a hundred and sixty pesetas between us. We got jobs with a farmer.”

  Rose nodded. A hundred and sixty pesetas was just a little over a pound. She knew Mr. Albert’s logistics by heart—fifty pounds a week at the very least to feed the menagerie. She said, “I’ve made a little more.”

  Toby asked, “What kind of a job have you got?”

  “At Las Flores.”

  The three men looked at her questioningly, and she said, “It’s a restaurant on the other side of town. We saw it the other day when Deeter left.”

  The men remembered then, vaguely, for in the stress of saying farewell to Deeter and the horses they had hardly noticed it.

  “As a waitress,” Rose said. “I been a waitress before.”