The Congo Venus

by Matthew Head

  “Except the Parthenon’s a little spotty.”

  “Oh.”

  “Whereas you’re not spotty at all.”

  She gave me that questioning look again. So far I had seen her use only two expressions, the smile and the question, but I liked them both. “Monsieur,” she said, “I do not know exactly what this Parthenon is.” Then the smile. “I called you Monsieur again,” she said. “It is because I feel so ignorant. It is a building, isn’t it? Oh, of course. There are many pictures of it. I remember now.”

  “That’s right.”

  “In Rome. The big round one where the gladiators—” She sensed something wrong, and was quiet again.

  “That’s the Colosseum. You’re not at all like that. Forget it.”

  “I am so ignorant,” she said. “I make so many mistakes.” She sighed and said, “Well—” but if she had anything else in mind to say, she decided it wasn’t worth saying.

  She was completely different from anything I would have expected. I wanted to ask her where she had grown up, how old she had been when she married Morelli, what she had done until then—or at least I wanted to know these things, but I didn’t want to ask her because there was something too good about things just as they were. I was seeing her as I would never have seen her anywhere else—at the Equatoriale or at the Club—in a situation where she wasn’t at the mercy of conventions and other attitudes she had never been taught correctly, and hadn’t the subtlety to understand by herself. And since I was leaving, or because of the way I had felt when I came out there that day, or because of something, at any rate, we were talking as you seldom talk to anyone—without the fencing and subterfuge and self-presentation, or self-disguise, which are the basis of almost every contact you have with people, even if unconsciously part of it, because you are always trying, consciously or not, to fit them into the scheme you have for your life and the kind of person you want to present yourself as being, to the world. Sometimes on boats you’re free from this compulsion; it accounts for boat romances, and the things that happen before the boat docks that could never happen after the passengers have got ashore. It’s the isolation in place and also in time, because on a boat, what has gone before and what will come after are only half real. Up there, that day, it was like that, but reduced to some kind of final simplicity.

  She said, “I meant to leave before you came. This morning I felt like coming up here.”

  “Don’t go now. Stay.”

  “You are very agreeable,” she said. “After all, it is your platform in a way.”

  “Mine at noon. Yours at night.”

  Then I said: “I like having you here.”

  She responded, “I like you.” It came out perfectly naturally and for a second it was perfectly all right, then it became something that had got itself said unawares. For a minute we weren’t quite alone. She turned and picked up the bottle of lotion again, and was more careful than need be about pouring some of it into her palm. She began smoothing it onto her leg from the knee to the ankle.

  I said, “That’s good, because I like you too,” but I had to say it as casually as I knew how, to make it all right. For another moment things hung in a balance; it could turn into a routine flirtation or it could go on being straight. What could she say, I wondered. If she said something silly or trivial, or on another tack entirely, it would be an acceptance of some embarrassment, and we hadn’t felt any embarrassment yet; if she added to what we had already said, it would be making too much of it. We sat there as if we were listening to the sound of what we had last said. It began to sound all right.

  She kept looking carefully at her leg as she smoothed it with her palm, up and down a few times, then she looked up at me with the smile, and instead of saying anything she offered me the bottle of oil. Then it was perfectly all right. We liked each other and had said so and that was that, and it was natural.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I usually bring some, but I didn’t bother today.”

  “But you will burn,” she said. Then she looked at my shoulders and said, “No, I suppose not. But your hair is dry now.”

  She unwrapped the towel from her head and shook her hair loose, and felt of it. “I have more than you have,” she said. “Mine’s still wet.” She left the towel off, and I was glad of it.

  She reached out and touched my hair. “It is dry,” she said. I felt it spring against her finger tips. I felt her parting my hair with her fingers, and for a moment she pressed close to the scalp. “It has dried through,” she said.

  “I don’t want to go down,” I said. What I didn’t want to do was take any chance of disturbing things exactly as they were; I didn’t want to admit there was anything beyond the platform, not even the cool water of the pool.

  “You don’t have to go down,” she said. She rose easily, and fetched the cap of water, and came and sat beside me again. “This time I was careful not to look beyond the edge,” she said. “It is so good here.” She held the cap with both hands and offered it to me.

  I said, “You do it.”

  She held the cap by its strap and with the other hand dipped a palmful of water on my hair. Then she laughed and said, “Too slow,” and dumped the whole capful over my head.

  I lay down on my back, arms and legs spread flat out. I had to crick my neck a little to look at her.

  “You do need oil,” she said.

  “Give me a little.”

  She picked up the bottle to hand it to me, but halfway through the gesture she stopped. Lying on your back it’s awkward to rub oil on yourself. She poured some into her palm and said, “Here,” and began to smooth it across my chest. It was wonderfully luxurious. Then there was no question at all about what I was feeling. I closed my eyes and told myself that this was ridiculous and that I was about to make a mistake. At high noon, on top a diving platform, with a woman I had known about twenty minutes. But I knew it was one of the good times, not juggled and jockied for, unexpected, not even something important, but something more natural and immediate than you would ever find by hunting for it. I rolled over on my side toward her and put an arm across her waist.

  “I like you,” I said.

  She didn’t move, but remained there with the bottle of oil in one hand, and the other hand slightly raised, as she had withdrawn it when I turned toward her. We looked at each other, and I knew it wasn’t ridiculous and that it wasn’t a mistake.

  She was the one who made the mistake. She wrenched herself away, not away from me because I made no effort to hold her. She wrenched away from herself, and stood up suddenly, where she could look beyond the edge of the platform and see the restricting world around her. She looked at me again, once, very quickly, and then disappeared.

  I caught my breath as if I had been the one who had dived. There was a splash, then in a moment the sound of swimming. I heard the water stream off her onto the concrete as she climbed out, but I didn’t move, lying there on my side, looking at the bottle of oil where she had dropped it.

  “Monsieur?” from below.

  “Yes?”

  “I like you, too,” she said, and before long I heard her car start and drive away.

  But she had made a mistake. It would have been wonderful.

  It would have been wonderful, and now, almost three years later, with Liliane dead, I lay up there in the night thinking about how she had been that day up there in the brilliant sun. I went over it all, just as it had happened, then lay there just letting whatever thoughts come that wanted to. I must have dozed, because I didn’t hear any car drive into the parking area, and I hadn’t noticed how low the moon was getting. I woke to soft voices and little splashings in the pool. I crawled over to the edge of the platform and lay flat on my stomach, watching the three figures playing around in the water—Gollmer and Mademoiselle Lala and Mademoiselle Baba, hardly visible except as amorphous silhouettes in the faded light, but unmistakably themselves. They were playing and splashing around in the shallow end of the pool; apparently
the girls couldn’t swim, for they only bobbed and bounced and splashed water at one another. Now and then one of them would jump as high as she could, splashing and laughing as she came down again. Dr. Gollmer would swim away from them, then come back, or climb out and dive back in and come up between them. I lay and watched as they played for twenty minutes or so; it was pleasant to watch, and I thought of the play of puppies. I liked it as an end to my long day, and especially as an end to the time I had spent up there thinking about Liliane Morelli. Watching them was like being part of the easiest and most affectionate companionship. Finally they climbed out of the pool and began wandering toward the parking area, where a car stood as a dark isolated blob. They spoke in low, gentle tones which I could hear without hearing the words, and finally I couldn’t hear anything at all. I watched while they climbed into the car, and watched the car as it went out of the lot and down the road and out of sight. Then I got up and climbed down the ladder and went home. Mary Finney and Emily were due for breakfast in a few hours.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THREE HOURS AFTER I HAD got to bed, I turned off my alarm and rolled over and went to sleep again, and an hour later one of the boys woke me and said I had to hurry because they were almost through with breakfast in the dining room and there were two ladies this morning, ung gran’ rouge ay ung petee blanc, he said, a big red one and a little white one. I staggered up and gave my face a few licks with the razor and staggered across the yard to the dining room.

  Miss Finney and Miss Collins were sitting over coffee cups and Tommy Slattery was pinch-hitting for me and looking as if he enjoyed it. The breakfast table was a ruin, and everybody else had left.

  I said, “Good morning.”

  “Where the hell have you been?” said Miss Finney.

  I said, “Good morning, Emily.”

  “Good morning, Hoop dear.”

  “Good morning, Tommy,” I said.

  “Hiya,” said Tommy in surprise. Our usual morning greeting was a surly exchange of grunts.

  Miss Finney said, “You look like the wrath of God. What are you standing there for? Sit down and eat some breakfast. You’re late.”

  “Good morning, Doctor,” I said. I sat down and looked over the bleary half-papaya that nobody else had wanted and asked Tommy to ring for some toast. “In answer to your greeting, where the hell have I been, I have been the hell in bed.”

  “Well, you look as if you had shared it with a couple of chimpanzees,” Miss Finney said. “I didn’t keep you out that late.”

  “I fell in with some friends and we wound up at El Morocco.”

  Miss Finney snorted and turned to Tommy Slattery. “Mr. Slattery,” she said, “I don’t suppose you’d mind turning this wit over to me for the day, would you?”

  Tommy grinned and said, “No, ma’am.”

  “You can go now, Tommy,” I told him.

  “As a matter of fact, I’ve got to,” Tommy said. “It was a pleasure seeing you, Dr. Finney. Miss Collins. Why don’t the two of you come out here to dinner tonight with us?”

  “Thanks,” said Miss Finney, “but I might be leaving town.”

  I said, “You might—what?”

  “Be leaving town. Errand to do.”

  “Goodness,” said Emily. “What in the world, Mary?”

  “Little personal business,” said Miss Finney, offhand. “Little business to settle up.”

  “But you will come, won’t you, Miss Collins?” Tommy said.

  “Oh, no,” Miss Finney said. “Emily might be going too.”

  “Goodness,” breathed Emily. “I might?” And then, philosophically, “Well—I’m afraid I can’t accept your kind invitation, Mr. Slattery.”

  Tommy grinned again and said not to me, but to Miss Finney, “What about Hoop? Shall I expect him?”

  “About that,” Miss Finney said, “I don’t know yet. Depends.”

  “I see,” said Tommy. “Well, I’ll be interested to learn what disposition you make of him. I’ll have to excuse myself now.”

  “I’ll keep you posted,” Miss Finney said graciously. “Thank you so much for the breakfasts, Mr. Slattery,” and Tommy went out.

  “This is dandy,” I said. “I love travel.”

  Miss Finney made the sound which is usually written down as “Humph!” and went on, “Don’t get your hopes up. For that matter, I might not be leaving, myself, or Emily either. Depends on how fast things go. There’s so much to be done I don’t even know what we’ll do first. One thing, I want you to pay that call of condolence on Madame de St. Nicaise.”

  “Today?”

  “This morning.”

  The boy brought toast and coffee and I almost choked on the first bite when I heard Emily say, “Poor dear Madame de St. Nicaise. I do hope the new Madame Morelli will be one she likes.”

  I heard Miss Finney take in her breath sharply. “Say again, please?” she said incredulously.

  “Did I say something?” Emily asked.

  Miss Finney said, “Emily, you are honestly the most—“ She stopped, helpless. “Give me a minute to pull myself together,” she said, and she literally did a little adjusting of straps or underpinnings or something of the kind as if her clothes had suddenly got out of normal relationship to her. Then she said, “You said something about how you did hope that the new Madame Morelli will be one that poor dear Madame de St. Nicaise likes.”

  “So what?” said Emily. She wasn’t using it as a slang phrase. She meant she really wanted to know so what.

  “Don’t you think it’s rather a spectacular announcement?” Miss Finney asked. “Two weeks after his second wife’s death? Or did you just mean that you take it for granted that he’ll take a third eventually?”

  “Why, no,” said Emily. “I mean this new one.”

  Miss Finney breathed heavily. “Where did you pick up this bit of information?” she managed to ask. “And when?”

  “Yesterday,” said Emily. “At the meeting of the Society for the Encourage—”

  “Et cetera,” said Miss Finney. “Go on.”

  “—Among Congo Natives. Everyone there was talking about it.”

  “Everyone? Madame de St. Nicaise?”

  “Oh, no, of course not Madame de St. Nicaise!”

  “Hoop, have you heard anything about this?”

  “No,” I said. “For Pete’s sake. It puts an entirely different light on the whole—”

  Miss Finney shot me a glance that would have pinned me to the wall if I’d been against it, and I remembered that as far as Emily was concerned there had been nothing odd about Liliane Morelli’s death. Miss Finney said quickly, “Emily, would you mind giving me this in more detail?”

  “Now let—me—see,” said Emily, like a conscientious little girl intent on giving the correct answer. “All the ladies of the committee were there, and Madame de St. Nicaise went out of the room for something. I was sitting over on the piano bench because I had just been playing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ for them and explaining how much trouble we always had with the boys at the missions because they keep changing the rhythm to their own, on the drums, and that had been kind of a mistake because Madame de St. Nicaise had said we shouldn’t allow them to use their drums, not even with ‘Onward Christian Soldiers,’ and for a minute I thought I had lost us the pump-organ. She does hate native things so, poor thing. But then I explained to her that I never let them beat their own rhythms, but just a nice one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four—“

  Miss Finney groaned.

  “But you asked me how it happened, Mary,” said Miss Collins, “and I’m trying to tell you. So she seemed somewhat mollified, and as you know, we are going to get the pump-organ, so everything came out all right after all. And then shortly after this, when Madame de St. Nicaise went out of the room, just the way I said, I was sitting there on the piano bench, and there were photographs on the piano.”

  “That’s nice,” said Miss Finney.

  “I think so too,” said Emily. “I
love photographs on a piano. And one lady pointed to one of the photographs and whispered to the next one, ‘This is the first Madame Morelli,’ and another one whispered, ‘No photograph of Liliane, I notice,’ and the first one said, ‘What is she going to say when she hears?’” Emily took a deep breath and started around the track for another lap. “And then the first one said, ‘Poor Hélène,’ that’s Madame de St. Nicaise, you know, and then another one came up and said, ‘Poor Hélène why? What are you talking about?’ and this first woman said, ‘My dear, Morelli has had this girl down in Thysville for ever so long, and now he’s marrying her. Everybody knows it,’ and then” —Emily gasped like a swimmer coming up after setting an underwater record, and plunged again—“and then a couple of others came up and they all began whispering at once so I could hardly hear, and then Madame de St. Nicaise came in so they were all quiet again, and that’s all. Is that what you wanted to know?” She sank back in her chair and I felt somebody ought to give her a rubdown.

  “You did just fine,” Miss Finney said. “Any better and I couldn’t have stuck it out to the end. Emily, did this seem to come as news to the rest of the women, when they all came up and began whispering at once so you could hardly hear?”

  “I think so. They seemed awfully excited,” Emily said.

  “I’ll bet!” said Miss Finney. “Ghouls!” Her face took on a look of extreme concentration, which in her case means a look so dead-pan that you expect a membrane to slide over her eyes like a lizard’s. Then she said, “Hoop, finish that toast and get out your best notepaper—have you got any good notepaper?”

  “I’ve got the rest of the box that I had to buy to accept the Governor-General’s tea party on.”

  “That’s perfect. If only Madame de St. Nicaise could know that. All right, eat that toast, then get out that notepaper and write your prettiest note to Madame de St. Nicaise—for God’s sake I wish that woman had a shorter name, I’m going to call her Nicky—about how Mr. Tolliver would appreciate the privilege of paying his respects this morning and send it over there by a boy in a spang-clean uniform right away. You sure you know absolutely the most proper high-toned form?”