by Anthony Hyde
“Who is your favourite writer?”
“Richard Wright—I only found him late. And Tolstoy.”
How could you object? But this was also disappointing: as if, having been asked to name his favourite painting, he’d said the Mona Lisa. Mathilde suddenly felt resentful. She knew she was partly feeling this only because she was now more confident: but that in itself was something to resent. It was all so conventional, she thought, a holiday adventure. The difference in their ages now seemed to be working a different way; all afternoon, worrying about what he felt, reading such significance into every clue, she’d been behaving like an adolescent. It was all beneath her. She didn’t want to seduce or be seduced. Haven’t you gone beyond all that? she asked herself.
He came out of the kitchen again. “Like another drink?”
“Are you trying to get me drunk?”
He smiled. “I have Coke, if you like.”
He had scored a point; she smiled in acknowledgment. But it gave her no pleasure, and she didn’t want to give him credit for it. When she accepted another mojito, she raised her glass. “To the Revolution!”
Her sarcasm was plain enough. He just tilted his glass an inch, and clearly with a different meaning. “You weren’t impressed?”
“I was supposed to be?”
“I was hoping you’d draw your own conclusions. I wanted you to see for yourself.”
“Well, it’s a failure, isn’t it?”
“I’m not so sure. I’m not so sure Cuba is a failure.”
“I mean the regime. Castro. The Revolution.”
“You might want to draw some distinctions there.”
“I wonder if the Cuban people do. Well, I suppose they do. Castro is a hero. But when he’s gone? What you see all over Havana are people learning to be capitalists, with their paladares and their casa particulares. Private enterprise is flourishing. Think of the scams. Did you ever read Balzac?”
Bailey shook his head. “Just heard of him.”
“Well, he once said, ‘Behind every great fortune is a crime.’ In Cuba, it’s a thousand little crimes.”
“Those people are just trying to survive.”
“That’s the point!”
“All right, but what you’re really saying is that the revolution never happened. Maybe that’s what I was trying to show you. Havana is like a museum. It’s the Museum of 1959. It preserves that moment, the cars do, so do all the buildings that are falling apart, even the potholes in the street. The Hotel Nacional. Everything. Castro took power, but that wasn’t a revolution.”
“You’re only dodging the question. And how can you still believe in revolution? You do, don’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“After this? Castro’s had his chance, he’s been in power almost fifty years! The Berlin Wall is down! It’s over! You’re right—there never was a revolution and there never will be!”
He laughed. “So? You’re saying history has no meaning, it’s not going anywhere.”
“Tea leaves have a meaning. You read the meaning into them!”
“I guess I’m still a Marxist, I think I know its meaning. Anyway, it isn’t written on a dollar bill. Like I told you, the future isn’t over yet.”
He had said it again. In her mind, Mathilde translated the phrase into French; it would certainly be a subhead in her article. Bailey went back to the kitchen, and their supper. He wouldn’t let her help, so she watched, leaning back in the doorway. He had no phone. But he could use one next door, apparently the same arrangement Adamaris had made, and at seven Mathilde called Lorraine; no answer, but she left a message. Then they ate Bailey’s meal. It was delicious, though he only had beer to serve it with: “With a fish like this, you need Pouilly-Fuissé,” Mathilde told him, and then she had fun teaching him to pronounce it. Afterwards, she did the dishes—she insisted, she wouldn’t even let him dry—which gave her a few minutes in his neat, cramped kitchen: one small sink and a green plastic basin to do the rinsing. He had a small glass of rum waiting when she was finished, a thimbleful. “It’s almost as old as you are.” They sipped. It was like liqueur. They were standing in front of his gallery of boxers. “You haven’t asked me about these,” said Bailey.
“Did you ever do it? Were you a boxer?”
“Fighter. That’s what we used to say. I boxed as a kid. I was never very good, but I wasn’t half bad either. And I boxed a little in prison.” He laughed. “I was a criminal, but I never ended up with a fortune, like your Balzac.”
“Who is this one? That’s a real signature, isn’t it?”
“Floyd Patterson. And he signed it, all right. He was heavyweight champion of the world. I was on the boxing team in prison. He visited—of course that was long after he lost the title. That”—he pointed with the hand holding his glass—“is all I took with me on the plane. I had to fold it, to get it inside my jacket.”
“So he inspired you? As a Panther?”
Bailey laughed at this. “No, no. Not like that. He was more your N double-A C P kind of fighter. A fine example for the young. He was my hero though, and I never gave up on him. Of course he lost. They all do. Liston beat him. But he was a great champion and a decent man. He inspired me as a boy . . . I’m not sure how. You could get out. Be someone. The usual stuff. That’s when I was eight or ten—he beat Archie Moore for the title in ’56.”
Now Mathilde was silent. She felt ashamed. She sensed how much she’d missed of him—how wide of the mark her resentment had been. She looked at the photograph of Patterson, which he’d taken with him, fleeing capture, into the gamble of his life, the hijacked plane. Which had taken him to this life. Did he cling to the idea of revolution in the same kind of way? But then she felt ashamed again; she had no right to condescend to him. His life had been a history, he had a right to his opinion: she could barely get out a sensible question.
He said, after a moment. “So what are you thinking now?”
“What you said before. ‘The future isn’t over yet.’”
“I don’t think so.” He put his glass down on the bookcase and then he kissed her. She almost swooned, her breath lost in a trembling convulsion of relief. They went to his bed. Her breasts were so swollen with feeling she thought they’d burst. His hands spread her thighs, and her sex spilt out, and the first press of his flesh inside gave her the strongest orgasm of her life, so different that now it seemed the only one. He enjoyed her slowly, and rather deliberately, only, when he sensed she was close, he picked up a rapid rhythm that ended with him lodged inside her, quite still, so she could come and hang on tight. He left her. His sex glistened in the dark, she heard him breathing, deep and full but smooth. He said softly, “Roll over for me, baby.” Baby. No one had ever called her that. She rolled over. His hands smoothed down her back, and played a little with her buttocks. Yet he didn’t quite come inside her from behind, but rather straddled her, squatting over her, thrusting down from his hips and thighs. She gasped, he went in so deep; yet he moved gently, almost casually, taking what she gave as given, not much to get excited over. Perhaps it was his age, he was sedate, enjoying the gulf between urgency and desire. She turned her head back. She could only see his legs, his foot, the pale skin underneath, his toes thrust out for balance. In the sight of him she saw herself. She was one woman, among all the women. She was just another fuck, but she was his fuck now, and that was all that mattered, and she moaned, calling out his name, and he drew back and stroked down, once, twice, and the third time stayed, swelling up, sealing her up inside. Her eyes went wide, she knew what was happening now, surely this was the grip of fate. And then he finished with one long sigh, trembling at first, then turning easy, as he settled on her with a pressure she had to take up on her arms. He eased up. Lifted up. She twisted her head back again, trying to see, wanting to, and knew, with his right hand, he was stripping the last of his semen out of his penis and into her. She let herself down on the bed. Her legs shook. Her thighs were trembling. Her belly twitched. But then
his lips were on her neck, and his hands were soothing her. She lay like that a while and then she fell asleep.
When she woke up, the room was dark. Bailey was in the living room, also dark, looking out the window: the lights of a boat were heading out to sea. Of course he wanted her to stay the night, but she explained about Lorraine. He finally accepted this and drove her back. It was almost midnight. There was no light under the older woman’s door, so, after all, she didn’t knock. In the dark, she lay naked beneath the sheets. But then she made herself get up and put on pyjamas. She closed her eyes. She was so excited she couldn’t imagine that she could sleep; but then she did.
THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2005
1
Lorraine now discovered that it was hard to be frank with herself, even about the smallest matters. She supposed she had suffered a nervous breakdown, and this was apparently its greatest consequence, even more debilitating than the practical restriction that agoraphobia imposed.
She was completely unsure of herself. She was standing on sand: the very act of securing her footing caused it to slide away. Any resolution, even the simplest, began dissolving the moment she formed it—even such an ordinary project as going to the bank, brought about by the practical necessity of changing some money. It was best not to admit to anything, even something as straightforward as this, for it only gave the terror an excuse to assert itself. Everything had to be worked out behind her own back; she had to keep everything secret from herself.
That morning, when she woke up, she certainly knew what she was going to do—what she had to do, since she had only ten convertible pesos in her purse. But it had to be led up to, and carefully; it was best to pretend that nothing was happening at all. She washed, showered, dressed. Only as she put on her makeup did a hint of her intention emerge, for she applied more than her usual touch of lipstick, and took care to outline her eyebrows. But the possibility that she might be going out was only implied, not stated so directly that it might create an occasion for alarm. When she opened the room safe—in the bottom of the wardrobe, and worked by a key—the possibility was made more likely, but wasn’t absolutely necessary; after all, she opened it most mornings just to check its contents. It was reasonable to think only about how very inconvenient it was; she had to get onto her knees and push the hem of her long skirt aside, and she wanted to strike a match, it was so dark. Still, she could see that her passport and return ticket were just as she’d left them; also her wallet of traveller’s cheques; also the twelve thousand Canadian dollars she had brought for Almado Valdes.
She took out the wallet of traveller’s cheques, and now her intention—and the terror it could bring her—seemed to rest on the very brink of her mind; but she was still able to push it away. There was another possibility, after all. The cheques were also denominated in Canadian dollars, one hundred dollars each, exactly like the bills she had brought for Almado—one hundred and twenty of them had scarcely made a bulge in the zippered pocket of her purse. Could she not exchange two of the cheques for two of the bills? She sat back on her heels, the cheque wallet in her hand. She had already discovered that the hotel would not change the cheques but would be happy to give her convertible pesos for the bills. Temptation—desire—hope: these were so acute she had to squeeze her eyes shut.
She opened them. Her conscience pressed upon her with the weight of resignation. Murray’s money wasn’t hers; if anyone’s, it was Almado’s. In simple arithmetical terms, the exchange might seem equal, and yet it couldn’t be entirely proper. Or was she being silly? The trouble was, she knew that transactions were always expressions of self-interest, and one party, inevitably, would get the better of another. The very fact that she was tempted proved it was wrong. Even if the value she took could only be measured in some sort of emotional currency, it would still be stolen, and from an interest she was duty bound to protect. She’d known this from the start, of course. Her delay, all this thinking, was entirely sham. She snapped open the wallet, and tore out two cheques. She put it back in the safe, and removed her passport. Then she locked the safe and stood up.
Now, Lorraine knew, she must move very carefully; above all, she must avoid any haste—that would be the admission of exactly the possibility she couldn’t admit, would not even name. Don’t make a fuss. Take everything for granted. Pretend nothing has happened. This was the reason she didn’t go into the breakfast room; Mathilde was probably waiting, and she knew that the temptation of asking her for help would be too near to avoid, but in fact she wouldn’t ask, she wouldn’t quite be able to do that, and it would all become a self-fulfilling prophecy; she would be doomed at the outset. She couldn’t take the chance. She remembered walking to school and how it was bad luck to step on a crack in the sidewalk, but it was cheating to stop, you had to keep going—so one false step finished you. That was the trick: no false steps. A single stumble would bring the fear rushing in, even if the stumble only took place in her mind. This meant, for example, that she couldn’t take a single wrong turning, which was strangely made more complicated because it made no difference, really, which way she went. Oficios and Brasil—Banco Financiero Internacional, that’s where she was heading. And she’d been there before. Stepping out of the hotel, she could turn down San Ignacio to Brasil, then go left again, for it ran into Oficios. On the other hand, she could leave the hotel and turn right, into Armagura, until she reached Oficios, and then go along to Brasil. The key was not to hesitate, whichever way she went. She mustn’t think about where she was going, and once she was walking she must let her mind be absorbed, on the one hand, by the sights the street presented to her—a young Cuban woman walking to work in high heels, never mind the potholes, and a young black man in a singlet pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with rubbish, and further ahead a fat young white man, a tourist, in short pants with dozens of bulging pockets—and, on the other, with perfectly good thoughts that were entirely inconsequential, the mistake it had been to bring traveller’s cheques at all, and the problem Murray’s will had presented, for it had specified ten thousand American dollars except the Cubans no longer wanted them, so his shade was going to have to accept Canadian money even if the amount wasn’t precisely exact: and then she was there, she had made it, she opened the big glass door and stepped inside.
The bank was crowded. It always was. She was ready for it. She’d been here before. There was a lineup but no actual line. An older black man, somewhat stout in his plain black suit, kept things in order, and when she smiled at him, he indicated the person ahead of her. That’s how it worked. You kept your eye on that person, who was himself keeping an eye on the next person ahead, just as the person behind kept her eye on you. So people stood about, wherever they liked; early birds even had couches to sit upon, but that was all right, she didn’t mind standing. She waited. She was all right, in here. It was frustrating, waiting, but that was all right. Four wickets were open. She tried to work out who were Cubans, and who were tourists. She heard an Australian accent but didn’t look round. Simultaneously, two people walked away from the wickets and two people walked up. At the wickets, people were always so self-absorbed. Even if they’d been complaining about how slow things were, now they took their own sweet time. It was their turn. Now they were the only one. It was like looking into a mirror. For a moment, you were the only person to be seen, the only person in the whole wide world. No one else existed. Money was like that, too. Your money was the only money that counted. At the same time, one dollar was as good as another, it stood in for all the rest, all the money that existed, and of course a dollar could be turned into pesos or anything else. It was a kind of magic. Rabbits turned into doves. Oddly, she thought, Don would likely have agreed, though all his life he’d treated money as an object of mathematical thought, as if it were a part of nature, like the planets in their orbits. But of course he’d known that wasn’t true. So he’d had his secret life, the poetry; and after Eliot, Robert Graves had been his passion—a secret within a secret—and they’d once ma
de a pilgrimage to Majorca, infinitely disappointing. In fact, Don had been an expert in exactly this, foreign exchange. The Bank for International Settlements. Banco Financiero Internacional. Of course they were different, but what difference did the difference make?
Now her heart lifted. She was next. And then she was walking up to a wicket, the last on the left. The Cuban woman behind the glass was probably thirty, young, but smartly efficient: her fingernails were painted gold and she was slightly turned on her stool because she was wearing a short, tight skirt. Lorraine knew exactly what to do. She signed the cheques but didn’t fill in the line for “place” because the Cubans didn’t like you to. She passed through her passport. The woman looked at it, and wrote down all the details, but then—without even looking—she held it up, and waved it a little, until a young man came up behind her cubicle and took it from her. She smiled and said, “They make a photocopy.”
Lorraine cleared her throat. “Of course.”
The money came out of a machine. The woman counted it, stroking through a line on a chit the machine had printed: so many twenties, tens, and so forth. The man returned with the passport, and she barely looked at him as she took it back. She was very efficient. When she was finished, she counted the money all over again, passing it to Lorraine. Lorraine decided there was no point counting it again. She smiled and said, “Gracias,” and the young woman slipped her passport under the glass and Lorraine tucked it into her purse, then pulled it shut. She smiled, passing by the black man. She stepped outside, into the sunshine, and now she allowed herself a little luxury, the thought that she could walk along into the Plaza de San Francisco. . . . And was this the trigger? Was it a question of pushing her luck? And yet it didn’t seem to be so. For she decided, after all, to play it safe; decided it would be best to go back. She did not go on. She did turn back, but it was exactly then that the terror swept across her, like a cold wind. She felt it everywhere, fright, terror, and alarm, it was all around her, even though she knew it was all inside. She began to walk. Faster. A fatal mistake: the fear was quicker than she could ever be. She closed her eyes, she wanted to cry—she’d been so sure, it had been so nice, walking in the sun, so nice. . . . What had she done? Now she was running. But she was trying not to, or at least not too quickly, running with a certain degree of decorum, the way a lady should, as if she were running for a bus or perhaps to make an appointment if she was just a tiny bit behind time. But she knew it was hopeless. She couldn’t possibly run fast enough, and it was just too far, she couldn’t make it in a single dash, on a single breath—she was holding her breath. She had to stop and once she stopped . . . She pretended to look in a window. She leaned in a doorway, and looked at her watch: she was waiting for someone. She couldn’t go on. But she had to, and then she did, she didn’t know how, but she made it to the corner. That was crucial: now she could see the hotel, just a block away. Its rocky rococo facade loomed up like the prow of a ship. If she could see it . . . Her legs were stiff as sticks. Her back was corseted with sweat. But she passed her hand through her hair, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. I’m just a little flustered, that’s all. . . . And what was there to be afraid of ? Nothing. Nothing at all. There was no cause for alarm. Everything was all right. She was all right—