Love Among the Cannibals

by Wright Morris

  That’s how she sounded. It was more important than what she said. I mean how it sounded out there in that yard—how it sounded to me, to Mac, and in particular how it sounded to the Greek, in the room at my back. Something in the stillness of the air behind me—as if the Greek had stopped breathing—warned me that she was awake. That every drop of this Southern oil fell on the fire.

  “We’ve been doing very well, thank you,” I said, loud enough for the Greek to hear me, “but I think we might do even better if we were left alone.”

  Billie smiled her pleated smile. One of the decisions she had made that long first night was to hear no, see no, speak no evil.

  “Mac took the most pahticulah trouble,” she went on, “to say how impotun he considuhs yoh wuk, and what a pity it would be if anything whatsoevah—”

  Right at that point Mac, sitting there as if drugged, suddenly banged both hands down on the keyboard, making a racket that made the skin at the back of my neck feel tight. Then he stopped, as suddenly as he started, cocked his head to one side as if listening, and he heard—we all heard, I mean—the tapping on the wall. But it was no laughing matter. My police dog had rolled over to scratch a bite.

  “—what a pity it would be,” Billie repeated, as if she hadn’t noticed the interruption, “if anything whatsoevuh should come between yoh, me, an Mac.”

  “Wonder what it would be?” I said. “Any guesses?”

  “Yoh men!” she cried. “Yoh can be so chilelike.”

  “Christamighty!” Mac bellowed, hopping up from the log. “Whatta you say we eat? If I hear any more talk—” He took a grip on his beret and yanked it down over his ears.

  “What about something new in a song hit,” I said, and took my seat at the piano, pecked around for my tune. I found it, beamed my voice at Billie:

  “When you find the cannibelle of heart’s desire,

  Put your little homemade pot on the fire,

  Plunk your chick

  Into the pot,

  Then jump in yourself when the water’s hot.”

  “Christ, man—” said Mac, and took my place at the piano, ran off a few bars, then gave me my cue.

  “The sweetest fat, not to mention the bones,

  You’ll no longer find in the temperate zones,

  But in Acapulco

  By the sea

  Where I ate my cannibelle and she ate me.”

  “It’s great, man!” barked Mac. “But will they buy it?”

  “Noel Cowt might do it in Las Fegus,” Billie said.

  “Las Vegas, hell,” I said, “they’ll eat it up in Acapulco—” and turned to look at the Greek, in her shorts and bra, standing in the door. One eye was swollen shut. There was nothing particularly serene about her, she stood there with one hand in her hair, scratching, making a frying sound like a firecracker about to go off. She looked like hell. I mean she looked full of it. If she had gone off right then, and not later, we’d all have been a little damaged, but it might have been better than one of us being blown apart. Mac hopped up like it might be him, and yelled:

  “Hey man, here’s your gringo!”

  Mac likes people, but he almost loves them when he can slap a label on them like gringo. I walked to where I could see Señor Carrillo, his head stuck out of his cab, waving. He had his kids in the car.

  “Honey bun,” said Billie, to her man, “whyn’t you go along with Uhl an’ help him. Whyn’t you go along so he can get back quickuh, an’ we can all get to wuk.”

  That was the best offer he’d had since we’d arrived.

  “Let’s go, man!” he barked, and ran off like a kid. I had to step inside to put on some clothes, and the Greek came to the door to watch me. There was something on her mind, but I wanted her to keep it there.

  “Cigarettes?” I said. “Chewing gum, chick poison?” She didn’t smile.

  “If you happen to get hungry,” I said, “there’s a li’l Suthun fried chicken in the yard.”

  I smiled, but the Greek didn’t. Very coolly, deliberately, she squeezed blood from a fresh bite, licked it off. I gave her swollen eye a kiss, as I passed, and at the edge of the yard I turned to look at her. She was smiling. I could almost see the feathers of the canary she had swallowed on her lips.

  I walked down to the car where Mac was seated in the rear, and Señor Carrillo had his kids up front. They all rode with their backs to the windshield, their eyes on us. When we got to the highway I noticed that the car was stripped like something you might find on the beach. The little fish had eaten all the flesh off it. Out on the shimmering bay I could see the schooner, the dream boat that had come in at night, and I asked Señor Carrillo if he knew its name. He did.

  “The Dolphin,” he said, then he added, “She is on the way back.”

  “Back where?” I inquired.

  “To the States. She is from California,” he said.

  I settled back in the seat, and Mac suddenly said:

  “Man, don’t you get that li’l girl wrong.”

  I didn’t want to talk about her, but I said, “Which one?”

  “Man, didn’t you hear me say li’l?”

  That should have warned me. He refers to all females as li’l chicks. When he doesn’t, somebody else has sorted them out.

  “I don’t think I do get her wrong,” I replied.

  “She’s the best friend we ever had,” said Mac. “That li’l girl’s got me an’ your interest at heart.”

  “That’s nice,” I said. “That’s certainly nice.”

  “You’re darn tootin’ it’s nice,” he replied, showing how much she had already done for him.

  “She wash your mouth out with soap and water?” I said.

  “What you mean?”

  “Dam tootin’ is a pretty strong term,” I said.

  “Now look here, man,” he said.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. We once had a little rhubarb of a serious sort, in which I proved to be a little quicker than he was.

  “If you don’t want to hear what I’ve got to say,” I said, “sit there in the comer and don’t ask me questions.”

  “Man—” he barked, “this is all for the team. This for our own good.”

  “Any changes in the line-up since yesterday?”

  “There three of us now, man. This li’l girl’s great. She about chewed my ear off talkin’ about you. She thinks you’re Cole Porter, Liberace, Noel Cowert all rolled into one. She thinks you’re great. Thing that worries her is she thinks you got an awful bad break.”

  “I do too,” I said, “but what the hell, somebody has to write the music.”

  “Just kills her to see you wastin’ your talents with this chick you got. Thing that worries her is, the team. She says this chick’s fulla designs. Bein’ a woman herself, she knows how this chick’s mind works.”

  “How does it work?” I said. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.

  “She’s got an ulterior motif—” said Mac. “If she didn’t, you think she’d be doin’ what she’s doin’?” He leaned back to let me get the full weight of it.

  “It just never crossed my mind,” I replied.

  “Way she sees it,” said Mac, “she’s got her mind set on a big fat part. Built the way she is. When the time for the showdown comes, why then she’ll apply the screws.”

  “I don’t feel any pain,” I said.

  “You crazy, man? You got a big reputashun. You’re nationly known figure down here—with this chick. What the hell, man. You must be crazy with the heat.”

  We had moved around the bay to where I had a better view of the big boat. Two men were up in the rigging. I saw a rope loop out, then fall to the deck.

  “If she wasn’t that sorta chick,” went on Mac, “you’d never get away with what you’re doin’. Fact you do, proves it. Like Billie says. If she felt about you way Billie does about me, she’d have put her foot down just the way Billie did. Why you suppose, when we went an’ got married, she didn’t speak up?” I didn’t reply, and he s
aid, “Man, it’s time you woke up. It’s time you knew what sorta girl this chick is—”

  “I do,” I replied.

  “You do?”

  “She’s precisely the girl I want.”

  “You—” said Mac, rocking back, “you want a—”

  “Cat got your tongue?” I said. “Or is it just soap and water?”

  “You know what I mean, man!”

  “You bet,” I said. “You probably mean whore or slut. Slut is probably the word in your mind, but with your clean little Lifebuoy mouth you wouldn’t think of mentioning it. Besides whore, there’s moll, which is a word I like, and it may be that a moll like the Greek is my dream girl, but the word I like best is just plain cannibelle. It covers the ground. My cannibelle and I seem to feed on each other, but I’d say that you and your cannibelle—”

  Mac turned from me as if he heard a voice call him, stuck his head out of the car. When he kept it there, Señor Carrillo slowed the car down and drew over to the curb. We parked there at the curbing, in the sun, while Mac groaned and puked into the street.

  “He is ill?” Señor Carrillo inquired.

  “It is nothing,” I replied. “Just something he has eaten.”

  To eat something, in Acapulco, and not keep it down is not news. Passers-by walked in an arc around us, but did not slow down. We sat there, in a drone of flies, until Mac heaved back and slumped down in the seat. Señor Carrillo drove on and when we stopped at our beer joint I went in. I took more time than usual, bought more beer, but when I came back to the car Mac was gone. Señor Carrillo made the face of a man who was sick where he couldn’t throw up.

  It took us about an hour, I would say, to round up the food. When we drove back along the bay I noticed that my dream boat was on its way out. One sail was up in the rigging. The crew were busy on the deck. We drove along slower than usual just to keep our eyes on the bay. With the sail up in the rigging she cast a dark shadow on her own swell.

  My man Friday helped me carry the food up to the house. One of the Eroza kids was out in the yard sinking beer caps in the dirt, like mosaics, and Señora Eroza, propped upright on her broad base, appeared to be asleep. You never saw a scene so peaceful. Was that what made me scared?

  “Come and get it!” I yelled, just to break the quiet, but nobody did. I knew they wouldn’t. Somehow I knew they couldn’t. Not both of them. I stood there the way you do after you’ve felt a concussion in the air and are waiting for the noise, then I walked to the hole in our wall and peered in. The bed was empty. My police dog was nowhere in sight. Her shoes were on the floor, her touring togs were on the wall, but I knew that she had snapped the leash—I knew she had bolted something. I crossed the room to the hole in that wall, peered in.

  Mrs. Irwin K. Macgregor was there on the bed. She was tied down to it. Her arms, stretched taut over her head, were tied at the wrists to the bed legs; her legs were spread and the ankles fastened to the legs at the foot. Both her legs and arms were tied down with rags, a gag of rags was in her mouth, but otherwise she was stripped like the car we had left in the ditch. Her simple gown had been tom up to make the rags with which she was tied. My police dog had not bolted her alive, nor even fed on the softer parts, but after sniffing at the flesh had kicked up a little dirt to bury it. The contents of the night pot had been rubbed in like an ointment, soaked into the bed.

  “Billie!” I said, and put my hand to her face, but she made no sound. Her eyes were wide, too wide, and when I leaned directly above her they rolled, without meaning or focus, past my face. There was a bruise on one side of her body but too big for a blow: where the Greek must have leaned while tying and anointing her. The occasional smear of blood was not her own. It would rub clean from her skin, showing no scratch. Her powdered face had been slapped until it was puffy, so that she looked as if she might have been crying, but otherwise she was all in one piece; there were very few marks. She had merely been crucified in her own rags, and cunningly stripped. A very cool, professional job. Not done in haste.

  I cut the rags, took the gag from her mouth, and wiped off her face. I didn’t have much hope, nor feel much pity, nor care much what I felt. In the general stripping down something had also been stripped from me. Pity for the inessentials, the soiled Rose of Memphis being one.

  I sat there on the bed and Señor Carrillo, as if to shade us from the light, stood in the door. Without any warning, this kid began to sob. All in a whoop. A pitiful flood, then she let out this moan like an animal, and rolled over on her face. When I touched her she curled up like something that had shriveled from the heat. Wrapped up in those strips of rag, with loose ends at her wrists and ankles, she looked like a galley slave thrown to celluloid lions. Like most of them, however, since the script called for it, she would survive.

  I left her there, and in the yard asked Señora Eroza if she had seen the other girl, the big one, and she replied that she had, waving her hand toward the street. I asked Señor Carrillo to stay with the girl, then went down the slope, almost running, since something stronger than a suspicion had crossed my mind. I was still running when I passed the car, where the night workers dozed in the seat, then I ran across the empty lot to the sea wall, where the sun was in my eyes. On the clean sweep of sand left by the tide, there were tracks that went into the sea, but did not come out. Out on the bay there was nothing. Nothing, that is, but the big dream boat. Our dream boat, out near the middle of the harbor, under motor power but her sails unfurling, and where the boom swept the deck I could see her. She was that big. Like a madman I waved my arms, I screamed like a bird. When I saw her arm wave I leaped from the wall and ran down into the sea. Knee-deep in the water my stampeding fear slowly ran down. The arms that waved by themselves fell at my side, my panic buzzed like a muffled alarm, and I heard someone splashing up behind me in the surf. Señor Carrillo, his pants rolled to his thighs, stood knee-deep in the water prepared to save me. The cloud of anxiety in his dark face was even greater than my own. He seemed to think I was mad enough to try to swim it, or drown myself. We stood there together, washed by the tide, gazing down the bay to the open sea, joined in a fellowship of helplessness. We watched the last of my dream boat’s sails go up, and puff out with the wind. When I came out of the water he trailed along with me, back up the tracks we had made coming down, back to the sea wall where we stood side by side, facing the bay. We stood there till the sails were out of sight. Then he followed me across the empty lot to his car, the door on the driver’s side still open, and I waited while he unrolled his pants and put on his shoes and socks.

  We drove back to town. It was his idea, not mine. We drove back to that hotel facing the bay where a little pimp in English walking shorts sold me, as he said, something he thought would interest me. This was not the muchacha he had along with him, but a post-card view with the following information:

  Amerigringo in mans Rm.

  Hotel Paloma

  I didn’t check on the muchacha, said to be muy fino, but in the men’s room of the Hotel Paloma, in one of the stalls, we found our Amerigringo as described. In time of trouble, my colleague Macgregor achieves one triumph of mind over matter. He joins that brotherhood of man who seek out a dark, quiet, private place. This one was very dark, there being no lights, and he sat on the stool, his fists pressed to his eyes, an empty bottle of gin on the floor at his side. Several muchachas de Guadalajara had apparently fleeced him—the pockets of his coat and pants were turned inside out—as if they had all had a try at him as he came down the stairs. Mac didn’t really like gin, but straight gin was the symbol of that fine mad age he had never really lived in but had heard a lot about, and he admired the sort of man that only gin destroyed. The blurb on Mac’s last Immortal Jazz Album would read—it would, that is, if I wrote it— something like this:

  Irwin “Mac” Macgregor, wizard of the keyboard, creator of the tunes on a million lips, was found in the john of the Hotel Paloma, in Acapulco. The hand of death beckoned to him at the height of his c
areer. With his old friend and colleague Earl Horter, he was engaged, at the time of his death, in writing those immortal songs that will be sung while men have hearts. Old Dan Cupid—so important in his life—this time shot an arrow that proved fatal, una muchacha de Acapulco, as they say, being too much for him.

  He was not yet dead, merely stinking drunk, but he had managed to increase our production costs by one pimp, one quart of Gordon’s gin, forty-five bucks in cash, one self-winding wrist watch, one Dunhill gold lighter, and one crucifix on a silver chain. One soiled Amerigringo was all his little muchacha had left.

  We carried him to the car, like a sack, but even that little haul left me so winded I knew we’d never get him, without some help, up the slope to the house. On our way back, as we passed the car, I saw that the men had stopped their siesta, and I asked Señor Carrillo if he would ask them to give us a hand. They were glad to. Even without the usual consideration. It had become known that the car on which they worked belonged to me and the sick Amerigringo, and to help carry him to wherever he belonged was a very small thing. In exchange for an American car, so to speak, a Mexican lift. So they gave us a lift, the four of us, with a limb apiece, managing pretty well, and we placed him on my bed since the one next door was still occupied. Señor Carrillo, without my suggesting, made us both a small lunch. On one bed we had a woman, half mad, on the other a gringo, completely drunk, far out at sea we had a castaway, and in the ditch what was left of our car. Stripped down. What was there left of us to strip?

  Señor Carrillo took a certain pride in me, but not much. He stayed, that is. He fed me what he thought I should eat. After eating we smoked, and the new Mrs. Macgregor, trailing her rags like a mad Ophelia, came to the rim of the porch and looked at us. She was hungry.

  “Pull up a chair—” I said, and offered her the chopping block.

  She ate olives, drank her coffee without sugar, and black. I was struck by the beauty of her eyes now that she had looked at something through them. I also noticed the animal redness of her lips. It crossed my mind that she was a true cannibelle at last. There was blood under her nails, and on her lips was the sun-tanned flesh of the Greek.