III
I woke up about sunrise, scratching the fresh bites on my legs. I had rolled from the slope into the basin Señora Eroza had left in the mattress, since the Greek, who had filled part of it, was not in the bed.
In less time than it took me to scratch a bite, I was on my feet. Listening. Jumping up the way I did had startled a bird that had been in the room, and it flew around wildly, slapping the screens, until it found the door. The surf had stopped pounding. It now rolled in with the sound of a rug unrolled. I’m either looking for the crime that justifies my fears or punishment for the fears that are justified. I stood there listening. For what? The puppy-like whinny of the Greek making love. The rhythmic thump of a bed on the wall. Instead I heard music. Did it come from across the bay? At the door between the rooms I peered in to see the bodies sprawled on the bed, a sweaty tangle of limbs, but Billie was curled like a kitten, on her beach towel, and Mac lay in the hollow of the car seats, Between them, on the floor, the portable radio whispered of Latin love. But fitfully. Left on all night, the batteries had run down.
Then I thought of Eroza, the lean, Latin lover, but he slept like a child, his knees drawn up, in the shadow of the dark mound of his wife. Around her lay her farrow, top, side, and bottom, to make one mattress do. In the rubbish pit at the edge of the yard, like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, the raw head of a buzzard cocked one eye at me. But no Greek.
Almost running, I went through the door to the front porch and stumbled on her. She sat there leaning on a post, idly scratching her bites. Her hair was mussed, and one eyelid was swollen. Where had she found the chewing gum?
“What the devil!” I said.
She looked at my legs, at the bites down on her level.
“Soap—” she said, “soap stops the itching.”
“Why the hell didn’t you say something?” I said, and put my hand to my face. It was sweating.
“Say what?”
“Look—” I said, “I wake up out of sound sleep—”
She was smiling.
“You think that’s funny?”
“Without their pants,” she said, “I think men are.”
I had been so upset I had rushed out there without my pants. Or anything else. I went back into the room and slipped them on, came out again. I sat down on the porch and helped myself to one of her cigarettes.
“Can I help it—?” she asked.
“Help what?”
“That you don’t trust me?”
“I trust you,” I said, “to do just as you like, and knowing what you like—” I inhaled deeply. I was too damn upset even to care how I felt. “All you had to do was touch me and say—well, hell, just say anything—”
“You were asleep.”
“Was that why?”
“I wanted to sit here alone.”
I made a face as if the sun had hit my eyes.
“Well, that’s plain enough,” I said. I made as if to get up, but when she didn’t stop me I sat down again.
“I’m alone. You’re alone. Why is it wrong to admit it?”
“It’s not,” I said, “but why rub it in?”
She didn’t bother to reply to that, and I went on, “Now I’m rubbing it in, I suppose, hoping to convince myself of something I don’t really believe. I rub it in because it feels so good when I stop.”
She ran her hand through my hair and said, “It’s full of sand now. The way I like it.”
“Just before I went to sleep I thought of something. Something I wanted to ask you.”
“What?”
“If you knew what day it was.”
“I don’t.” I let her think, and she said, “Well, what day is it?”
“I met you—we met—just a week ago.”
I waited for her to say something. Anything. After some time she said, “I have to be so careful about your feelings.”
I changed my position so I could gaze at her face. One eye was bite-swollen. Her lips and nose had been burned by the sun. As I have said before, she is not at all distinguished in the parts. I looked into her one eye, then at her mouth, for some clear sign of the lack of moral fiber, the softness and incipient decay of a girl of that type. Her one-eyed gaze held mine. Her lips filled me with nothing but desire.
“It occurred to me,” I said, “that now I haven’t known you for one whole week.”
“What is there to know?”
I thought a moment, then said, “Do you miss your piano?”
The hand that rested in my hair took a firm grip on it, twisted my head around. She held it out before her, like the Gorgon head of Medusa, and I saw the pupil of her eye grow large. Then she released me, snapped her gum sharply, and said, “No.” After a pause she said:
“What are you thinking?”
“That’s the first time you’ve ever asked me,” I said. She didn’t deny it, or seem to care. “What am I thinking?” I said, and thought of something. “I don’t know you—but I know you better.”
That amused her. Smiling she asked, “What do you know?”
“That you like one piano better than another.”
“Maybe so,” she said, gripping my hair again, “but I play them all. They are all pianos.”
“So all pianos are equal,” I said, “but some pianos are more equal than others.”
She took my head as if she meant to crack it like an apple. Then she let it drop.
“One wouldn’t know that if one didn’t play them all,” she replied.
I had an answer to that, but I kept it. Good as an answer is, you can’t hug and kiss it. If pianos unequal to other pianos were not played—where would that leave me?
“This particular upright piano—” I said, drumming on my chest with my fingers, “is one that came in with the silent movies. It’s not equal to much. But it’s at your service, nevertheless.”
The sun had given her the smell, almost flinty, that gave her skin its peculiar flavor, and I leaned forward, my chin on her knees, to take a bite of it. I crooned:
“Baby, cannibelle, I fear its true,
Something called my love is eating you—”
But before I managed I heard someone right behind me, humming the tune. Mac. He was there, both hands scratching, in the door.
“Scuse me for buttin’ in, man,” he said, his voice full of heart and husky, “but Christamighty, man, that was great. You get it down?”
I didn’t reply.
“Gee-zus, man—” he said, cleared his throat and sang:
“All pee-anos are equal, ta-ta-dee-dane,
But this piano unequal to the strainmm.
This li’l piano is your pee-annn-ooo
Neva-tha-lesssssss! ”
The Creek was laughing. I raised my head from her knees and turned to Mac.
“Christamighty, man!” he said. “What a theme. Every li’l chick is her own piano, every li’l piano needs its own timer, every li’l tuner—”
“Is an old song-and-dance man,” I said, but he didn’t hear me. The theme and variations had carried him away. He stepped out on the porch just in time for the sun to strike his face. He was bug-bitten, sunburned, and from the way he dug at his crotch he was also lousy, but he looked great. Every li’l piano had him transformed. He had that smile on his face he usually reserved for the Million-Dollar Baby at the jewelry counter. He also had her. She was right there behind him in the door. He turned to her and crooned:
“Every li’l chick is her own pee-an-oooo.”
But when he reached for her keyboard it slipped away.
He wheeled back to me and said, “Man, I gotta play somethin’!” and faced the yard, as if he might see it. The Eroza kids, all five of them, were fanned out in the yard waiting to see what next.
“There’s your piano,” I said, and pointed at the chop block, which sat about as high as a piano stool. I never thought he would, but Mac strolled over, dusted the feathers off the top, then sat down on it. Straddle-legged, he took a tuck in his invisible pants,
placed his hands in the air, on the invisible keys, then lidded his eyes while he fingered for the lost chord. He found it, sounded it, then turned his lover’s gaze on the Greek. Dreamily, he crooned:
“This old piano, baby,
Is down on its knees,
The strings are missing
And so are the keys,
But I don’t mean maybe
This old piano, baby,
Is yourrrrssssssss.
When we start kissin’
There’s no chord missin’,
I’m easy to please
If you’re the kitten on my keys
Baaaaaa-beeeeeee.”
Eyes lidded, lips parted, he went on softly fingering the invisible keys. One hand he placed in his lap, like Liberace, with the other he played his love song without words, while the Erozas, white-eyed with wonder, stood gazing at him. On the air—the faraway tinkle seemed to drip from his fingers, like drops of water—we could hear the fitful, fading whisper of the radio.
“How’s that?” he whispered, leaving a note suspended.
“Sounds familiar,” I said. “Would it be Gershwin?”
It would. He gave me that smile which expressed his pity for the cynical type.
“You gotta start with somethin’, man,” he said, and beamed a smile at the Greek, “so it might as well be good.”
“We’ll start you with a piano,” I replied, “a real piano. It’s more your type.”
He didn’t seem to care. He sat there happy with the one he had.
“Every li’l chick’s her own pee-an-oooo,” he crooned, and swung into “What Next?”
We had fruit and what was left of the coffee for breakfast, then we loaded up with beach chairs and headed for the beach. On the way we paused to see what was left of the car. It appeared to have crawled deeper into the hole, since both the windshield and the top were now gone. The hood had also been raised, and work on the engine had begun. The spark plugs, the carburetor, the oil and air filters, and the battery were gone. I examined the job from the professional standpoint. It was fairly clean.
“We gonna charge this to production?” Mac said, and it crossed my mind that we should. It was part of the production. What part? The purest part of a cannibal’s love. I took a card from my billfold, leaned on the fender to make a few notes. Mac opened the umbrella to stand beneath it. In its hot green shade he stared at me, and waited. The girls had walked on ahead of us to get out of the heat. I let them move out of range, then I sang:
“A cannibelle’s affection is the other way round,
She builds you up by tearing you down.
She strips your chassis,
She drains your gas,
She leaves you like an oil smear in the underpass.”
“Man, I’ll buy it,” said Mac flatly, and put a hand into his pocket. He drew out a stick of gum, divided it in half, gave a piece to me. Under the beach umbrella we crossed the empty lot to where the women, standing on the sea wall, had turned to see what was keeping us. They looked great. They looked extremely well fed, that is. A lovely pair of cannibelles, sunned and scented, waiting for the boys to bring up the pot, build the fire, then hop in and be stewed. Before we reached them, I heard this voice hallooing at us. My cab driver was there in the road with his cab. This time he wasn’t alone. In the seat at his side were three or four kids. I hollered at him to wait, then I asked the girls if there was any little thing they wanted. The Greek wanted filter-tip cigarettes and chewing gum. Billie wanted soap. She also wanted paper, of the sort that came on a roll.
I left Mac in the shade of the umbrella, and the girls standing on the sea wall, and came back through the glare of heat to the cab. Since I was a special deal, he put the kids in the rear, let me ride in front. I said we’d want the usual thing, only even more of it, along with some batteries for the radio, some cigarettes, soap, and some chewing gum.
“Anything else?” he asked.
We exchanged glances. I wondered how he knew, then I said, “And a piano.”
He turned the car in the road, headed it back toward town.
“A what?” he said.
“A piano,” I repeated.
“On the beach?”
I shook my head, casually. “No, not on the beach. Right now we would like it where we live.”
“And where was that?”
I told him. In passing I mentioned the name of Señor Eroza.
“Ahhhhhh—” he said, and looked at me with understanding.
“You know him?” I inquired.
He nodded. After a mile or so he added, “A fine place. Electric lights, shower, water, any day now.”
“A piano, too—” I said, “any day now,” and he agreed.
We bought chickens this time, roasted young fryers, fresh pineapple we had sliced and stored in a thermos, cans of the long green beans we could eat without cooking, some sweet rolls for breakfast, cigars for me, Kleenex for everybody, and a DDT bomb. To get some live batteries, however, we had to rim down a fellow with a portable set, then persuade him to rent the set to us. That took time. On the way back I bought ice-cream cones for everybody in the car, and three more for the beach, which I gave to the kids to run ahead and deliver for us. Before we reached the sea wall with the load of food, one of the boys ran at me with a melting cone.
What was the trouble?
“There were only two people,” he replied.
I was holding the hamper. It held me upright to the spot. I did not need to ask which one was missing.
“She will be swimming,” I said. “She likes to swim,” then we all walked ahead to the sea wall where we could look. The tide was out. In the heat perhaps the sea was drying up. Mac stood deep in the shallow water, waving his arms. I could see nothing on the surface of the bay but an outrigger canoe, with a small patched sail, and beyond it a motor launch anchored a half-mile or so offshore. I dropped the hamper in the shade of the umbrella and ran down to Mac.
“What’s up?” I said.
Without facing me he said, “She went in for a swim, you know what I mean? She went in for a swim, an’ the next thing we knew—” He stopped there and waved his arm, a little wildly, at the bay. When he looked back at me I may have looked sick. He put his hand on my arm, said, “Man, don’t get me wrong, you know what I mean?”
“NO!” I screamed. “What the hell do you mean?”
He turned and flung his arm toward the bay again, in the direction of the boat.
“Next thing we knew, man,” he said, “she was on the damn boat. We saw them waving at her. Saw them pull her aboard.”
I didn’t reply.
“Man—” he said, “it was her. It took three of them to do it.”
I think it would have been better, in Mac’s opinion, if she had drowned. His idea about boats anchored that far offshore was the same as mine, and it wasn’t a good one. Out there, on the deck or in the hold, life was led without its prohibitions. An anchored boat was worse. All the hands were free, that is.
I walked back to the wall and told Señor Carrillo, my cabman and sponsor, that everything was all right, everything was hunky-dory, since my girl had just swum out to see a few friends. She would very likely swim back to the beach in an hour or two. He saw I was lying and it made him unhappy. Even the kid with the ice-cream cone knew that I was lying. He let the cone melt. He didn’t want to eat the ice cream of a lady who had drowned. I walked back to the umbrella where Billy had put out some of the food, and cut up slices of the chicken, but just the sight of food almost made me sick. I felt the same as I did the night I met the Greek, only worse. I knew what I wanted. I had the taste of it on my lips.
“Ah told him—” said Billie, wagging her little head, “ah told him to leave huh alone.”
“You told him what?” I barked. I may have yelled it.
When I wheeled to look at Mac his jaw hung slack. He got it working again, said:
“Look, man—will you look?”
“I’m doing nothi
ng else.”
“Woman—” said Mac, turning on Billie, “Christamighty, woman!” and I watched this little chick peel off a slice of the chicken, the way you would a strip of sunburn, and drop it into her pretty mouth. She licked her lips. That piece of flesh had been peeled from the three of us. In just a soiled little handful of words she had had her revenge.
“Ah doan mean to say he molestut huh,” she said, letting us think it over while she sucked on an olive, “but he ackshilly did egg huh on, Uhl, honey. He re-ah-ly did.”
“Man—” said Mac, hoarsely, “you know what I did? Just to make a li’l chitchat, you know what I did? I asked her if she happent to have a li’l girl friend somethin’ like herself. You know what I mean? Just to kid her a bit. You know what I mean?”
“He wantut a li’l curl so much lak huh,” said Billie, “he didn’t want to take the trouple of waitin’ foh huh.”
Mac took off the straw hat he was wearing and sailed it down the beach. He ran his hand through his hair, and at a loss for words, for gestures, for song hits, he picked up a thermos, shook out a handful of the ice cubes, chewed two or three of them up. The water ran from his mouth and dripped on his dark linen beach shirt. If he had been in the Greek’s line of development nothing on sea or land would have kept them apart. She hadn’t swum out to sea to avoid it, she had swum out to sea looking for it. I knew that. He knew it. We all knew it.
Out on the bay this boat had swung around on its anchor while I stood there looking at it. The tide had turned. I could see people in the deck chairs, sunning themselves.
“All I got to say is—” said Mac, “she’s gonna miss a damn fine lunch,” and he took some of the olives, popped one into his mouth. All he ate was the one, the rest he tossed, one at a time, in the direction of the buzzard that had pitched his camp on the post nearest us. I missed that lunch too. Billie Harcum and the buzzard ate the white meat.
I couldn’t sit there on the beach, staring at the boat, so I asked Señor Carrillo to take me into town. In town I would try to find out whose boat it was. That sounded sensible. It also gave me something to do. Mac followed me back to the cab as if he intended to go along.
Love Among the Cannibals Page 12