Night of Fire and Snow

by Alfred Coppel

  On such a day as that he ranged once far beyond his usual haunts. Billy was in town with his mother and Tom had gone to Gumeville with Oliver. Concha was busy with some household duty and Maria was drowsing on the sundeck. The house lay creaking in the shadowless heat, and the book he was reading couldn’t hold him. He felt restless and too warm. He slipped his pad and pencil into the pocket of his denim shorts and walked down to the river.

  The sun’s outline was a brilliant haziness behind the high clouds. He covered his eyes with one hand and looked into the sky through his fingers. Arrows of fire seemed to pierce his skull but he kept looking until the tears streamed down his cheeks.

  Presently, he looked away and closed his eyes watching the red and orange afterimages floating behind his closed lids.

  He walked to the water and bathed his face until his eyes felt cool again, then he turned upstream and began to run.

  At the glade, he stopped and drew a picture of a skull and crossbones and left it for Tommy or Billy or Sandy to find, then he wandered on, more slowly now. Frenchman’s Beach was empty, dead embers of last Sunday’s cooking fires lay black in their tiny Stonehenges of rocks. He waded into the water, digging his toes into the silt bottom, watching the dark, muddy clouds billow around his knees and drift slowly away downstream.

  A short distance from the beach were the shallow rapids and he waded across the river there, teetering on the slippery rocks. Frogs made startled splashes, leaping for the safety of the water as he passed. A pair of brown and black-and-white snipes took to the air and wheeled down the river, flying low over the water, their cries echoing into the tangled woods.

  He stepped onto the beach and picked his way through the scrubby brush. Ahead lay Eagle Rock and the Albergs’ house and beyond that, the Whirlpool. He passed the house quietly and skirted the sheer face of the big rock. He knew the shale hills back from the river, but the river gorge itself was unfamiliar because they had all been warned to stay away from the Whirlpool. He paused for only an instant and then continued upstream.

  The Whirlpool itself looked much less dangerous than its reputation. It eddied sluggishly in the strange afternoon light, bits of leaves and trash and froth rotating lazily on the surface of the water.

  Miguel stood on a rock and studied the route ahead. There would be difficulty in continuing, for the brush now grew right down to the water and he would have to crawl on his hands and knees through it or leave the river completely and climb the shale bluff to look for a trail.

  He looked up at the sun. It couldn’t be later than two o’clock, he thought. Though it was hard to tell in the hazy, stifling afternoon.

  He decided to go on exploring.

  The brush was even thicker than it looked. He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled. The sand was rough and hot. Cobwebs clung to his face and he brushed them away with distaste. He stopped and lay panting in the heat. Ahead of him, through the lattice of stems and branches, he could see a clearing.

  He pushed ahead, now dropping to his belly and wriggling through the dense undergrowth. He felt dry and uncomfortable and very thirsty.

  Finally, he reached the edge of the brush and lay looking out of the rough cover at a tiny, secluded cove. The willows grew thick all around it, screening it on three sides. There was a well-defined trail leading out of the woods under the bluff. It wound through the beach grass, past Miguel’s vantage point, and over a slight rise of sandy ground to the river.

  He started to get to his feet to inspect his find when the sound of low voices startled him. Voices and then whispers and soft laughter. Miguel dropped back onto his belly. There were two people on the beach. At first he thought they were a man and woman from the Villa, but as they rolled grotesquely together, he saw that they were Mr. Alberg and Ella Eubanks.

  They lay on the sand, their breath coming in regular, grunting sighs. Mrs. Eubanks’ dress was in a roll around her waist, making her look infinitely more naked than mere nudity could ever have done. Mr. Alberg wore only a shirt and his legs looked thin and white, like the legs of some sort of fowl.

  Mrs. Eubanks’ thigh, thick and pale and soft-looking, pressed against Alberg’s side. Her large buttocks flattened under her weight in the sand. Occasionally, she would reach up, putting her hands low on Alberg’s waist, to pull him to her with a liquid, moaning cry.

  Miguel lay rigid, afraid to make a sound. The brassy sky and the oppressive heat seemed to press down on him, squeezing the breath from his lungs. He watched them, shaken by a dreadful excitement. Their undulating movements were like some land of conflict. The whole scene reminded him of a picture he had seen somewhere, but watching them made him feel lightheaded and he could not remember.

  Their movements became more rapid, more breathless. The violent thrusting of body against body increased the sense of conflict. He heard Ella cry out in a strangled voice. The adult world grew suddenly immense and incomprehensible. Frightened, Miguel backed away, twisting about to push through the brush. He heard Mr. Alberg shout, “Who’s there? Dammit, who’s there?” but he did not stop. As soon as he could he stumbled to his feet and began to run back down the river, away from the hidden cove and the two sweating, moaning people on the sand.

  He did not stop until he fell breathlessly into the willow glade by Frenchman’s Beach. He sat down and hung his head, drawing in great gulps of air. He went to the river’s edge and lay there, drinking water slowly and then washing his face and neck.

  He was no longer frightened. He could see no reason to be. Mr. Alberg hadn’t seen him.

  He sat looking thoughtfully across the languid current. He was not sure what it was that he had seen, but he knew it for something remarkable. He had had a tantalizing instant of awareness that was as suddenly gone. He shook his head in puzzled annoyance. He could not account for his fright.

  Yet, there had been something fear-making in that writhing contest.

  Miguel took out his sketch pad and drew a picture. It did not convey at all what he had seen in the cove. He tried several times and failed. He destroyed each effort. It was late afternoon when he found his way home and began searching through the books cluttering his part of the sleeping porch.

  Finally, he found what he wanted. It recaptured the moment for him perfectly. He took the book out under the madronas with his journal, and using the picture as a guide, he sketched the scene on a blank page in graphic detail. Then, under the drawing, he wrote a meticulous account of what he had seen.

  When he had done, he lay back, holding the picture book above his head, studying the painting. It was Michelangelo’s rendering of Leda and the Swan.

  In later years, when he thought of the incident in the cove and the half-innocent unwisdom of describing it in his journal, he was filled with a sense of wonder at the naive assurance of eleven-year-olds that their possessions will always remain inviolate.

  Viewed in perspective, however, the encounter had its element of humor. Years later he was still smiling at the classical twist of thought that had led him to equate Ella Eubanks with the wife of a Spartan king, and Martin Alberg with—of all things—Zeus in the form of a swan.

  The incident in the cove haunted and disturbed Miguel. He wanted to talk to Anson about it, but he couldn’t. And to mention it to Essie would have been unthinkable. In the end, with unconscious irony, he was forced to turn to Tom for information.

  He sat in Tom’s room at Eubank Onus, afraid he would see Ella, and wondered how to broach the subject. As time passed, he grew more ill-at-ease until at last Tom commented on it.

  “What’s eating you, anyway? You look like you’re sitting on an ant-hill.”

  Miguel could hear Ella moving around on the sleeping porch. He could close his eyes and see her, lying half-naked and fleshy on the sand. He swallowed and said, “Let’s go down to the beach.”

  Tommy shrugged. “Okay. Let me tell my mom.”

  Miguel flushed and jumped to his feet. “I’ll meet you on the path.”

  H
e would not speak until they reached the willow glade. He threw himself to the ground and lay half out of breath while Tommy studied him in perplexity.

  Remembering all too clearly the clandestine atmosphere surrounding the incident on the beach, Miguel was drawing on a rapidly developing creative faculty to embroider, in his mind, a story containing the essential facts while withholding the identity of the people involved.

  Tom squatted curiously on the ground beside him and asked, “Well, now what’s the matter with you, anyway?”

  Miguel drew a deep breath and began to tell a complicated tale of having followed a man and woman from the Villa to the secret beach. He stumbled badly when he described the woman’s state of nudity, but he finished in a rush and waited for Tommy’s reaction.

  It wasn’t what he expected.

  Tom let out a whoop of laughter and doubled up, slapping his knee.

  “Well, what’s so funny?” Miguel asked sulkily. “How about letting me in on it?”

  “Spicko! You mean you don’t know?”

  Miguel, shamed, shook his head.

  “Holy cow, Rinehart—where have you been all your life?”

  “I said I didn’t know,” Miguel said stiffly.

  “The Frenchies were—“ he lowered his voice—“screwing.” Miguel looked blankly at him. “They were what?”

  Tommy looked at him as though he were going to choke with suppressing his laughter. “Making babies,” he said.

  Miguel sat up unbelievingly. “You mean that makes babies?”

  “What do you think, anyway? That you find babies under cabbage leaves, for chrissake?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “But me no buts, kiddo. Old Uncle Tom knows what he’s telling you.”

  Miguel’s confusion was complete. He could see no possible reason for Tom’s mother to want to make a baby with Mr. Alberg. He had often heard Ella complain about the trouble of raising “a wild Indian of a boy” and declare that she wouldn’t have another child for anything.

  Tom sat down beside Miguel. “I can prove it, kiddo.” His face looked red and moist in the summer heat.

  Miguel scratched his bare leg thoughtfully. “How?” he asked.

  “Easy as pie. But you have to promise not to tell.”

  “I wouldn’t tell, Tom.”

  “Swear it.”

  “I said I wouldn’t.”

  “You won’t ever say a word about this? Not even to Billy or Sand?”

  Miguel nodded. He felt a stirring of excitement.

  Tommy looked around. Frenchman’s Beach was empty and there was no one on the river, but he said, “Not here. Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Never mind. Just come on.”

  They crossed the river at the rapids and clambered up the bank into the vineyards. Tommy led the way, ordering Miguel to keep low. “We got to be careful. If my old man ever found out about this, Jeez-zuz—”

  They crawled between the grapestakes, Miguel growing more concerned by the minute. They hadn’t penetrated this far into the vintner’s land since the time he chased them with his salt-and-pepper gun. Finally, Tommy reached a hollow in the slope protected on all sides by heavy foliage. He wriggled back into the shade of a large vine and settled down, satisfied. “Remember, Spick. A promise is a promise,” he said solemnly. “I wouldn’t do this for any living soul but you.”

  “I understand, Tom.”

  “Now you have to keep still. No talking, see?” Tom opened his fly. Miguel could see the sparse growth of hair on his pubis. He, himself, was quite hairless there and the comparison made Tom seem much older.

  “What are you going to do, Tom?”

  “I said no talking, for chrissake!”

  Miguel looked away uncomfortably, embarrassed for his friend.

  Tom’s face grew ruddy with his exertions.

  “Doesn’t it hurt?” Miguel asked in a low voice.

  Tommy was panting vigorously. Presently, he was shaken by a spasm.

  “Holy cow,” Miguel breathed.

  Tommy grinned triumphantly. “Well, wise guy?”

  Miguel could find no words. The scene he remembered in the secret cove now took on an altogether different significance. He had a vivid memory of the flushed pleasure on Tommy’s face.

  Tom was kneeling now and buttoning his fly. He stretched and laughed. “Goes to show you you can’t learn everything from books, doesn’t it, Spick?”

  In that moment, Miguel, though not yet a man, was absolutely and irretrievably lost to childhood. Years later, when they were both at Roslyn and Miguel was learning to play with words, he spoke of that afternoon to Tom as “a triumph of the empiric method.”

  FIVE

  At Shannon Airport the passengers deplaned in a straggling line with the wind howling and snatching at their clothing. It was after midnight; the flight had been delayed by headwinds and unfavorable weather.

  The stewardess had said they would have thirty minutes in Shannon and Miguel had been ready simply to stay aboard the airplane and wait it out. He was tired and stiff already from drowsing in his seat. But the airplane was being serviced and the girl had been politely insistent that he join the rest of the passengers inside the concourse.

  He stood up and put on his trenchcoat and for a moment he stood in the doorway of the airplane looking at the Irish night. The green-and-white beacon rotated atop the control tower; jeeps and fuel trucks with their headlamps on moved about the concrete ramp. Down the line a BOAC Stratocruiser was loading passengers. It could be any airfield, he thought, anywhere. The one really remarkable tiling about the Air Age was its standardization. He turned up his collar and walked through the blustery darkness toward the lights of the terminal.

  Lieutenant Artigue met him just inside the concourse. He had been to the liquor store where whisky and gin could be bought without paying taxes and the pockets of his military greatcoat bulged and gurgled.

  “You’re ready to begin your holiday, I see,” Miguel said.

  The Belgian tapped his pockets significantly. “I look forward to a pleasant stay.”

  “Good luck to you.”

  “Please, I insist. A drink before leave-taking.”

  “If you’ll let me buy,” Miguel said, suddenly thinking that he would have to get out of the habit of picking up tabs at least until some money began to come in.

  They drank two Irish whiskies at the bar with a steaming mug of bitter coffee standing by for Miguel.

  “Your home is in California, M’sieu Rinehart?” the lieutenant asked.

  For a moment, Miguel was at a loss for an answer. Then he said, “San Francisco.”

  “Ah, San Francisco. It is a city I have often wished to see. Cable cars. I have heard of them. They climb the so-steep hills with ease.”

  “Well, with some ease,” Miguel said.

  “And the bridges. They are famous the world over. One day, perhaps, I shall visit your city.” He shrugged. “But for now—“ He tapped his pockets and smiled. “I must be content.” He extended his hand. “I shall remember our meeting, m’sieu, with pleasure.”

  “And I,” Miguel said formally. “Vaya con Dios, Teniente.”

  Artigue looked puzzled, but shook Miguel’s hand again. “Adieu, M’sieu Rinehart.”

  Miguel watched him pick his way through the crowd toward the door marked in Gaelic: Fir. He vanished inside. Miguel studied the thorny letters. Underneath the Gaelic, in English, was printed the translation: Men.

  Perhaps two per cent of Eire knew Gaelic, and yet every single sign in the terminal was written in both languages, and even the arrivals and departures were announced in Gaelic as well as in English. The separatists and nationalists demanded it. It was just the sort of petty truculence in his fellow man that wearied Miguel beyond measure. It seemed to him that in an age of intercontinental bombers and thermonuclear devices it was a step in exactly the wrong direction.

  He had seen the attitude everywhere: in the proud hostilit
y of a Guardia Civil in Cataluña where he had gone to see if he could find where Anson lay buried, in the slogans painted on the walls in southern France and northern Italy—AMI GO HOME. The instinct for community in mankind seemed a myth. If anything, people seemed to have a mutual repulsion for one another. It was depressing to think of Dorrie growing into womanhood in such a world.

  Still, he remembered the friendly face of a bookseller in Torino when Alaine asked for something of d’Annunzio’s. And her comic dialogue with J.C.—poor Jean defending the distemper of his countrymen by invoking the shades of Moliere and Montaigne while Allie accused him of looking like Gilles de Retz.

  They had been happy that spring of 1947, Miguel thought. It had been a good, big time for them, with the want of Nora under control, Miguel’s book a success.

  Euphoria, Miguel thought. I blunted the memory of Tom and Nora and all the rest of it with travel and excitement. I guess I always knew it couldn’t last.

  Miguel drank the last of his coffee and lit a cigarette. At a table nearby, the honeymooners from his flight had engaged another American tourist in conversation.

  “We rented a car for eighteen bucks a day,” the man said. “It’s the only way to see Europe.”

  Miguel watched the trio with mild indifference. He wondered why it was that Americans were so obviously Americans wherever they went. Around these three glowed the familiar aura of electric refrigerators, drive-in movies, Ed Sullivan on television, and chrome-spangled Pontiacs.

  Remembering the girl at the perfume counter at Orly, Miguel felt a pang of loneliness. No such aura clung to him. He was generally taken for a foreigner, no matter where he was. Yet, he thought sadly, I’m not only American, I’m a native son.

  “I told Fred,” the woman was saying, “we ought to get away from tourists. I mean, if we wanted to see people from home we might just as well have spent our vacation at Balboa.”

  The woman had a way of gesturing that reminded Miguel of Florian O’Connor, one of the girls Tom used to date when they were at Roslyn. Florian had a trick of posing herself carefully before the open hearth when she heard a car stop outside the house so that she would make a tableau when the maid opened the door. Tom never caught onto this trick of hers and it had irritated Miguel for months, right up to the time Florian dropped Tom for a boy from Montezuma School with a Buick convertible.