The Betrayers

by Harold Robbins

  I left Suez muttering about tropical storms and went to my place and got changed to go into town. The Flower Celebration was about the same as all the festivals that the town threw—an excuse for people to get together and dance and drink. It wasn’t for me, there was no one I really wanted to socialize with, but I was antsy and didn’t want to stick around the house.

  I drove into town and walked around, a cold beer in hand. The town square was alive with people having fun, music, dancing, laughing and talking. Carnival time was better than the daily drudge, but the town just wasn’t for me, period. Corozal was a nice, sleepy little place, sitting pretty on the bay, just ten miles from the Mexican border. Refugees fleeing from the caste war between mestizos and Indios in the Yucatán started the town a hundred years ago, naming it after the cohune palm, a symbol of fertility because cohune in the vernacular referred to a man’s testicles. The connotations of its name was the only risqué thing about the town. Even murders were few and far between.

  The town was probably a good place to come to die after living a good life, but not somewhere I wanted to hang around and wait to die. I was sure there was more action on one block of Havana than in the whole colony. In the colony, the women looked tame and the men looked like farmers. I heard that carnival time in places like Havana and Rio was so wild, it could burn the hair off your chest. Carnival in Corozal was definitely for family and friends.

  Suez’s melodious refrain “After you’ve seen Par-ee!” ran around my head as I walked along the outer edge of the square.

  Coming to a side street, I saw Sarah’s Morris Minor parked halfway down the block in front of the general store. And Jack coming up the street with a floozy. I recognized the woman, she was a puta, a whore, from Chetumal, the town on the Mexican side of the bay. I’d seen her in a bar last week with Jack. The swine couldn’t keep his hands off of her. It pissed me off, royally. Screwing around was one thing, but doing it publicly, rubbing Sarah’s face in his dirt, was a dirty trick to play on her.

  Shit!

  Sarah came out of the general store and almost walked into them. I froze. I couldn’t hear what was being said, there was too much noise from the band playing in the middle of the square, but Jack’s face turned ugly. I saw Sarah turn to go to her car but he grabbed her arm and swung her around to face him. He hit her across the face, causing her to stumble back against the car, dropping her packages.

  My heart started pumping. I went for Jack and ran full-pedal as Sarah got into her car and drove away. He stood in the street calling her a fucking bitch. He must have the heard the pound of my feet because he whipped around. I hit him with my right shoulder, trying to slam it into his solar plexus, but he turned sideways and I gave him only a glancing blow. I stumbled by him and he staggered back.

  I swung around ready to come back at him. He crouched down, his hand to his boot, and pulled out what he called his “pig-sticker,” a bone-handled hunting knife he kept in a boot sheath. I knew I had the advantage, so I kicked him in the face while he was still crouched, catching him under the chin. I was only sorry I hadn’t wore my old steel-toed boots because he would have been laid out for the duration. But I was wearing deerskin sandals with soles made from rubber tires. Instead of going out, he just fell back down on his rump.

  Before I knew it, a screaming, clawing tiger jumped on my back and clawed at my eyes with long fingernails. I spun around in a circle, trying to get Jack’s bitch off my back, but I went off balance and started to stagger. I threw myself backwards at Jack as he was getting up, literally falling against him with the puta still on my back. We went down, all three of us, with the woman finally letting go when she screamed that Jack had cut her.

  She scrambled out of the way with a cut on her arm as Jack started up again. I was on my feet first and I hit him with a right that caught him at the temple. He needed the hand holding the knife to brace himself from going back down, and as soon as he lowered his hand I hit him again with a right and then kept pounding his face until he was on the ground on his back.

  I stared down at him for a moment. He tried to get up and I kicked him hard in the stomach.

  The puta gave me a detailed verbal description of my inadequate manhood, my perverted sex life, my dubious sexuality. I thought my Spanish was pretty good, half the population in the district spoke it, but she knew insults that I had never heard.

  I went back to the square and to the side street where I had parked the jeep. The fight had not attracted much attention with the festival goers—they had more important things to worry about.

  The bumpy weather that Suez and I had at our tail flying in from Havana had finally reached Corozal. One minute people were drinking and dancing and the next everyone was scrambling to their cars or otherwise hurrying home with high winds blowing. I’d heard stories about how fast a hurricane could suddenly hit land. I never comprehended that it could really happen in such a short time. The horrors of storms that suddenly blew ashore and killed and injured thousands was on my mind and I’m sure everyone else’s as the wind velocity picked up.

  I headed out on the river road that led to the plantation and my place beyond. The wind kicked up a notch every mile I put under me. Then the sky opened up. The jeep’s rag top had been patched so often it looked like a crazy quilt. And was about as porous as mosquito netting.

  Sarah’s little Minor wasn’t at the plantation when I drove in.

  “Damn.”

  I backed the jeep up and turned around, heading for my place. I was worried about her. She needed to get shelter during the storm. The plantation house was not bad shelter. Neither were abode buildings—as long as the roofs stayed on.

  Wind howled at me. By the time I made it to the dirt road leading into my yard, palm fronds and sugarcanes were being dangerously whipped around. A ten-foot sugarcane stalk came at my windshield like a hurtled spear. I instinctively ducked but it went over the car.

  The Minor was parked in front of my bungalow.

  31

  Sarah was facing the glass door that led out to the backyard, her back to me, when I came in. The French patio doors were rattling from the storm. So was the roof. It felt as though it would lift off at any moment.

  I didn’t know what to say. This was the one person in the world who I cared for. Looking at her, I saw my father and my mother, I saw the warmth of a winter fire, the smell of hot soup coming from a pot on the stove, my mother and father playfully dueling with words in their contrasting views of the world. What I saw was family, all that I had left. There was something between us that I had with no other person on earth—blood love. She was all that I had and I would protect her with my life.

  “It’s over,” she said.

  She turned around to face me. Her cheek was raw. The bruise was turning black.

  “I’ve been a stupid fool. I should have left him years ago.”

  I shrugged. “We all make mistakes.”

  “Jack wasn’t a mistake, he was God’s punishment for whatever sins I’ve committed.” She laughed. “Maybe the devil was testing me, to see how I survived living in hell.”

  She suddenly broke into tears. I took her in my arms and held her tight. She shook as she sobbed.

  “I loved him, God, I don’t know why, I still love him.”

  “You wouldn’t—”

  She pushed back and looked at me. “Oh, God, no. He doesn’t want me, I should have left him long ago for his sake. He didn’t respect me.”

  “He’s an ass, don’t blame yourself.”

  “It’s not his fault, I wasn’t good enough—”

  “Don’t talk like that!” I grabbed her by the arms and shook her. “Stop it, don’t ever say that again. Listen to me, dammit. You’re the only one who can make you feel inferior. The Jacks of this world can’t do it, only you can. If you don’t respect yourself, how do you expect anyone else to?”

  She started sobbing again. I helped her to the couch and just held her. Christ, that’s all she needed was an idi
ot giving her a lecture when she was down. I was right, though. Jack didn’t cut her any slack, whipped her like a dog, because he didn’t respect her. Bullies only pick on people they don’t respect. And they have a shark’s instinct for finding victims. Jack bullied and abused Sarah because he unconsciously sensed Sarah would be an easy victim.

  But this wasn’t something she could learn from a lecture while she was suffering. Sarah was smart. When she got away from Jack, got some fresh air, in a new environment where she didn’t have to be on the defensive all the time, she would realize that she was a person of value who didn’t have to be anyone’s punching bag.

  I stroked her hair as she emptied her emotions on my shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she sobbed.

  “It’s okay.”

  The storm outside got angrier. The wind howled, the house shook, it felt like the house would go airborne. It was getting scary, but running outside to the flying debris would have been worse.

  She slowly lost her tears and raised her head to look into my eyes. Her eyes were misted.

  I fought my urge, but it was no good. It seemed natural to me. My lips met hers. They brushed, barely touching. Her lips were warm and lush and tasted like honey.

  “Isn’t that a pretty picture?”

  I nearly jumped out of my pants. It was the voice of doom.

  The wind battered the house, threatening to take it off its hinges and send it flying, taking it out of the colony and off to the Land of Oz.

  Only it wasn’t funny.

  Jack had a gun in his hand.

  “You’ve been fucking my wife.”

  Not yet.

  Wind raged against the bungalow, shaking the walls, pressing against the windows. Sugarcane debris, palm fronds and rain were hitting the bungalow like an artillery barrage. Rain slammed against the windows, threatening to burst in. I had a feeling the whole damn colony was about to be washed away, swept out to sea.

  Sarah pulled away from me to walk toward Jack. I grabbed her arm to stop her but she twisted away.

  “No, Nicky, I’ve been afraid too long.”

  “I’m going to kill both of you, no one will blame me, it’s the law of the land. I caught you two together.”

  “Stop it, Jack,” she said.

  “What makes it so disgusting is not only that you’ve been unfaithful to your loving husband, but you dirty slut, you fucked your own nephew.”

  “You are the one who is disgusting, Jack,” she said. “You’ve taken out all your failures, all your pain, on me. Go ahead and shoot me. It will put me out of my misery. I’d rather die than put up with you another day. Go ahead, you bastard, shoot me.”

  I jerked her back and stepped in front of her. He aimed the gun at my chest.

  “I hated you from the moment I saw you, you little prick,” he said.

  The front window suddenly exploded with glass and water. Sarah and I were both blown back by the burst.

  Jack dropped to his knees. He stared at us, his mouth gaped open, and then he fell forward on the floor, a stalk of sugarcane imbedded between his shoulder blades.

  32

  A week after the storm blew out, I drove Sarah to the airfield outside of Belize Town. She was scheduled on a Pan Am flight to New York and from there she was taking another flight to London.

  We had spoken little since the death of Jack. He had been only one of many who died at the hands of the barbaric storm. It had been hell in the colony since the hurricane, as the survivors dug out and the dead were buried. Corozal was almost blown entirely off the map. There were only a few buildings left standing.

  Sarah had insisted that Jack’s body be returned to Britain. “He was never comfortable in the colony,” she said, “he’d rest better on home ground. There are too many bad memories here for him.”

  I found her attitude about Jack incomprehensible. The man abused her, cheated on her, blamed her for his failures, treated her like a doormat, said he was going to kill her—yet she loved him. Regardless of what she said to his face in those last minutes, she was devastated by his death. It taught me something about love—it didn’t have to make sense. People didn’t choose who they loved. It was something that just happened and when it did, you were helpless.

  “You have no interest in coming to Britain?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “I’ve spent most of my life in a cold climate. The Caribbean sun has gotten into my blood.”

  I got her onto the plane and went back to Corozal to wrap up my life in the colony. There was Sarita to settle with and Suez to say goodbye to. I needed to take care of shipping Sarah’s things and to make sure she had a good financial start back home.

  After that, Havana was my next stop.

  RUM, CIGARS

  AND WOMEN

  IN THE MOUNTAINS WITH FIDEL CASTRO

  One night, only a short time before we discovered he was a traitor, Eutimio complained that he had no blanket and asked Fidel to lend him one. It was a cold February night, up in the hills. Fidel replied that if he gave Eutimio his blanket, they would both be cold; that it was better to share the blanket, topped by two of Fidel’s coats. That night, Eutimio Guerra, armed with a 45-caliber pistol that Casillas had given him to use against Fidel, and two hand grenades that were to be used to cover his getaway once the crime was committed, slept side by side with our leader.… Throughout the night, a great part of the Revolution depended on the thoughts of courage, fear, scruples, ambition, power, and money running through the mind of a traitor.

  CHE GUEVARA,REMINISCENCES

  THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL

  It was all dominated by the sweet, sickening odor of sugar. Columbus had brought sugarcane to the neighboring island of Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti) on his second voyage in 1493. From there it was taken to Cuba by the Spanish conquerors.

  The evil that sugar brought with it was slavery …

  The sugar plantations brought enormous profits.…

  HERBERT MATTHEWS,REVOLUTION IN CUBA

  33

  Havana, Cuba, 1958

  The last time I was in this boxing arena I saw a bout between Carmen Basilo and Sugar Ray Robinson, two of the greatest middleweights that ever put on gloves. Now I was back to see another match, actually a series of fights between what you might call bantamweights. And, unlike our “civilized” boxing matches where men only die by accident, if getting pounded for up to fifteen rounds can be called an accident, the fights I was about to see were real blood sports—the loser usually died. It wasn’t unlike the bloodthirsty gladiatorial games that Roman emperors used to entertain their subjects with—a battle to the death by two well-armed, superbly trained, ruthless opponents.

  But you could say there was some chickenshit to the games.

  I was in the arena to see cockfights.

  Until I hit Havana, I had no idea that cockfighting was an organized, world-class sport that could fill the same arena where world champion boxers stood toe-to-toe. In a little while, bad-tempered roosters with razors strapped to their legs were going to fly at each other and go at it until the ring was thick with blood and feathers. I heard that cockfights were conducted out in the bush of British Honduras, but there were more people in this arena than in the whole northern part of the colony.

  All to see chickens get bloodied.

  But several years in Cuba’s golden city had taught me a lot of things about people and places, not the least of which was to keep one eye on my back and another one on my wallet.

  “Isn’t this great?” Jose asked. “Look at them, they’re bloodthirsty animals, savage beasts. They can’t wait, they want to see the blood flowing, they want to smell the fear.”

  Jose was a high ranking official in Cuba’s ministry of economics. He was the bagman I paid off to do business in Cuba. That business included my rum distillery, a cigar factory, sugarcane fields and occasional flyers into whatever popped up. Right now I was interested in the casino business. There were casinos on what t
hey were calling “the Strip” in Las Vegas, but that was in the Western desert, thousands of miles from the East Coast. Havana was something like eighty miles off Florida, just a short hop over by plane or boat. That made it gambling heaven for Easterners.

  The “bloodthirsty animals” Jose was referring to weren’t the fighting cocks, but the audience. There had to be several thousand people in the stadium, and about ninety percent were men. They were excited, loud and anxious. Money flashed everywhere, fingers were held up, hats waved, all in some code that was indecipherable to me but seemed to be understood by everyone else. From a peso to a thousand pesos, sweating, excited men were placing bets.

  The only time I got sweaty and excited is when I’m lying with a naked woman and my hands and lips are feeling all of the mysteries of the feminine body. But these men were getting themselves worked up into an orgiastic state about a couple fuckin’ chickens slicing each other to ribbons.

  It made no sense to me. But you could learn more about human nature watching the audience in a cockfight than a season reading Freud. I’m sure if Freud and Jung had spent more time watching people get off over chicken blood, they would have had less confidence about the rationality of the human race.

  “Rabid dogs,” I said.

  “Señor?”

  “Rabid dogs, these people are nuts, they’re all worked up over killer chickens.”

  “Si! Si! Isn’t it wonderful. See the red—I tell you, Señor Cutter, put your money on the red, only on the red, look at him, his trainer can hardly keep him back, he wants to fight, he wants to kill, he smells the blood of the other chicken and now he wants to taste it.”

  I swear, Jose was almost drooling. Mother of God, could people really get this excited about chickens killing each other? I’ve seen men getting rabid over cockroaches, too, racing them for money, treating the bugs better than they do their wives and kids.