Heart Troubles

by Birmingham, Stephen;

“We’ll configurate that in when we settle the final bill,” Madame Foss said. “That won’t leave you much.”

  “I suppose I could treat that as an act of outright thievery, couldn’t I?” Linda said: “You had no right to take that.”

  “I considered that typewriter my legal possession,” Madame Foss said. “I took it and sold it and applied it against the rent.”

  “Stole it, you mean. Anyway, it was rather foolish of you. You removed his whole means of livelihood.”

  “He hasn’t written anything in a long, long time, baby.”

  “He’s been sick for a long, long time!”

  “Well, he can’t write when he’s sick, can he?”

  Linda sighed. There, she thought, was another example of Madame Foss’s impregnable logic. “I’m going to the Consulate,” she said.

  “You can’t get off this island without paying me,” Madame Foss said with a bright, sweet smile. “There’s blacks on this island would do anything for me. All I need to do is say the word.” Then she said, “But don’t worry, pet. Every cloud has its sunny side. He’ll get better, he’ll write something, I’ll get my money, and we’ll all be happy as clams at high tide.” She turned to Madras. “Won’t we, Madras?”

  Madras nodded. Between sips from his little bottle he was munching a banana.

  Madame Foss laughed. “Hey! How many swizzles you had, Madras?” she said. “Look at you! Drinking your silly head off. Oh, well, it kills the time for you, don’t it, honeybunch?”

  “Oh, God,” Linda said softly.

  “What’d you say, pet?”

  “I said ‘Oh, God!’” Linda said.

  “Well, that’s right. Prayer ought to help.”

  Another native girl came out on the veranda, looked at them all, giggled, and ran back inside the house.

  “Wasn’t that Skydrop?” Linda asked. “Did you hire her back?”

  “Yes,” Madame Foss said. “I forgave her.”

  “Forgave her!”

  “They love me, all these girls. They always come back.”

  “I don’t see why—the way you treat them.”

  A week ago Skydrop had been fired for a crime that had been actually Linda’s. Putting away the playing cards, after a bridge game one evening, the drawer had stuck in the writing table in the lounge and, as Linda tugged at it, the green-shaded student lamp on the table lurched and fell to the floor, shattering the globe. Linda had picked up the pieces and put them in the wastebasket, making a mental note to tell Madame Foss about it in the morning. But, coming down for breakfast, she had heard Madame Foss say to Madras, “Guess what, ducks? I had to fire that wretched Skydrop. Guess what she did. She broke my precious lampshade on the writing desk and then, when I called her in about it, the lying darky had the nerve to stand there, look me straight in the eye, and deny it! And me with all the evidence too—pieces of glass right in the wastebasket!” Linda had said, “Oh, no! No, I broke it—last night. She was telling you the truth.” Madame Foss had laughed and shrugged and said, “Oh, well, what does it matter, pet? I’ll get another maid as good as her.” “But that’s a terrible injustice!” Linda had said. “When a maid works for thirty-five cents a day,” Madame Foss had said, “we don’t worry too much about justice, pet!”

  And now, forgiven, Skydrop was back.

  “Yes,” Madame Foss said again, “they love me. Don’t you, Heaven Hill?” Heaven Hill giggled and agreed. “Skydrop and Heaven Hill live like ladies of the land,” she said. “And say,” she said to Linda, “don’t you think it’s cute, the names I give them? They’ve got other names of course, lord knows what they are, but I give them pretty names like Skydrop and Heaven Hill. Pretty names for pretty girls.”

  Linda looked away. The woman, she thought, is insane. I am trapped here, in this terrible heat, on this awful island, with a sick husband and a crazy woman. “Madame Foss,” she said softly, “I don’t know what else Harry and I have got now besides our clothes, my wedding ring, a few things like that. You’ve got the typewriter. I’ll give you my clothes—anything—if you’ll lend me enough money to get Harry to San Juan.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t take your clothes, pet. And if I took the ring it would bring me bad luck. So don’t fret.”

  “Oh, please, Madame Foss,” she said wearily. “Please help me. I’ll pay you back, I swear it.”

  “I am helping you, pet!” Madame Foss said. “Who’s been paying for the French doctor to come all the way over from Basse-Terre three times a week to see him? Thirty francs already that’s cost me! Who’s going to pay me back for that? Have I even asked to be paid back for that?”

  “You’ll get it back,” Linda said, “as soon as we get somewhere where we can—”

  “Don’t fret,” Madame Foss said. “I’m not worried. But I’m no Mrs. Moneybags, though you may think so from my jewelry.” She arched her fingers and looked, with a sudden smile of delight as though she had never noticed them before, at the rings they held. “Besides,” she said, “your daddy’s going to wire you every cent you need.”

  “I don’t know that at all,” Linda said. “I’m not at all sure he will. He hasn’t answered any of my letters. And I can’t even get him on the telephone.”

  “Your call will come through. Be patient.”

  “I’ve had that call placed for two days!”

  “The phone service here is always a little slow, pet,” Madame Foss said. “The cable has to handle Marie-Galante too, don’t forget. Every call has to take its turn, that’s the rule.”

  “If you knew how it kills me to sit here and beg you like this,” Linda said. And then, dully, “Just two hundred dollars. That’s all I need.”

  “Your daddy’s rich. Your husband told me that.”

  “Did he also tell you that when we were married he cut me off without a cent?” she said. “Did he? Did he tell you I was thrown out of the house for marrying Harry?”

  “Well,” said Madame Foss, rocking backward and forward in her chair, “if you two was going to live with no money, that was your choice, wasn’t it? Make your bed, you got to sleep in it, that’s my motto. Of course,” she added, “if you was going to try to live with no money, you should have had richness of spirit to make up for it. And that’s what young people nowadays lack, if you ask me my opinion of it.”

  “Harry made money,” she said, “when he was well! He’s only twenty-six. How were we to know that he’d—get sick?” Suddenly she was afraid she was going to cry, and she took a deep breath and closed her eyelids tight to hold the tears back. I won’t cry in front of her, she told herself, I won’t! I’ll cry inside my head, where she can’t see.

  “The French doctor’s coming again today,” Madame Foss said. “He’ll make your Harry right as rain.”

  “The French doctor!” she said angrily, her eyes still pressed tightly shut. “What kind of doctor is he! What kind of doctor would come to this Godforsaken place! I don’t think he’s even a doctor!”

  “What? Why, he’s the best doctor in Guadeloupe!”

  “He’s the only doctor! I can’t even seem to find out his name. He doesn’t even know what Harry’s got!”

  “His name is some funny French name, and it’s slipped my mind,” Madame Foss said primly. “You know I don’t understand the lingo. We call him the French doctor here, and we always have. What’s more,” she said, “he does know what your Harry’s got, and so do I.”

  “What is it, then?”

  Madame Foss folded her hands and looked down at them. In a different voice, she said something Linda could not hear.

  “What?”

  “Dysentery,” Madame Foss said.

  “How do you know?”

  “My first husband, the captain. He had it.”

  “Is—was that what he died of?”

  “Yes.”

  “And who treated him?” Linda said.

  “The French doctor.”

  For a moment Linda wanted to say something bitter and cruel, but then, as th
e bitter and cruel words swam meaninglessly in her mind, she began to wonder if she could control her tongue and lips to speak. A small, dull edge of fear had formed in her throat. The stillness and the heat of the air descended upon her and it seemed impossible to breathe. “I’ve got to get him to San Juan,” she said at last. “Or somewhere.”

  “The French doctor will be here soon,” Madame Foss said. “He’ll fix your Harry up again as right as rain.”

  “Well,” she said, trying to keep her voice level and matter of-fact, “what if he doesn’t? What if Harry dies? What will I do then?” She felt her voice traveling toward some thin place where, if it tripped slightly on a single syllable, it might collapse altogether. “Really—have you thought of that? What are you going to do with me?” She looked quickly away, thinking that never in her life had she stood so close to panic.

  “When you first came, you told me you were adventurous types,” Madame Foss said. “I thought to myself, How nice! My first husband, the captain, he was an adventurous type. That was why I thought it was nice you were staying here at Club Caprice.”

  “The adventure is over now,” Linda said.

  “Ah,” said Madame Foss, shaking her orange curls, “I think it is just beginning, baby.”

  Yes, Linda thought, it’s true. Silly as she was, a great deal of what Madame Foss said was ribbed with a kind of terrible truth; that was why she could not be argued with. Yes, they had been adventurous types. On freighters through the South Seas and to China, through the Mediterranean to Portugal, the Canaries, the West Indies … tropical places had been what they liked the best, the sunny islands. The attractive young couple, the young writer and his pretty wife; the pretty young woman with the handsome husband who was surely someday going to be the most famous writer in the world, they had wanted to be beachcombers, and this was what had come of it. They had combed the beaches and found—nothing.

  Madras, his fingers moving very slowly, was unstoppering another of his little bottles. “How about some bridge?” Madame Foss cried suddenly. “Come on, pet—it’ll ease your mind.”

  Weakly, Linda was grateful. “All right,” she said. She rose and crossed the veranda to the bridge table. Madras pulled his chair forward, and Heaven Hill came to sit with them as a fourth.

  “Put a record on the gramophone, Heaven Hill,” Madame Foss said. “Play something real pretty. Play ‘The Last Time I Saw Paris’—I do love that tune!”

  Heaven Hill put the record on and wound up the victrola while Linda shuffled and dealt the cards.

  Linda opened. “Pass,” she said.

  “One no-trump,” said Madame Foss.

  “Two clubs,” said Madras, after some thought.

  “Fi’ diamonda!” squealed Heaven Hill.

  “Six no-trump!” shouted Madame Foss, not waiting for Linda to pass. It was bidding typical of their card games because Heaven Hill and Madame Foss, who were always partners, had played for so many years together that they reached their slam contracts by an instant, psychic process. Heaven Hill laid down her cards. “Very pretty, partner,” said Madame Foss.

  She has us again, Linda thought, as she watched her play the hand, deftly and from old experience, drawing her trump, ruffing back and forth from her hand to the dummy, out of the dummy into her hand.

  “I don’t want to play any more,” Madras said, standing up when Madame Foss had collected her tricks. “It’s so hot my bones ache.” He went to the hammock where Linda had been sitting and lay face down upon it.

  Madame Foss tapped her little stack of cards on the table. “Poor Madras,” she said. “He drinks too much. The captain never drank, only beer. But,” she said with her brightest smile, “at least Madras is always good as gold, and kind as kind can be to me.”

  There was a sound in the yard outside, and Linda looked up and saw the little French doctor coming up the path. His black bag was in one hand and he carried his shoes in the other, and he was barefoot from walking across the muddy sand dunes from the other island.

  “Here he is!” cried Madame Foss. “Here’s our little handsome! Come in, come in, my little precious!”

  “Look … look,” the little doctor said in his halting English, and pointed up at the sky where, Linda realized, a dark cloud had covered the sun.

  “Oh, good—a storm!” said Madame Foss. “It’s going to rain, and that will cool the air, and that will make our dear Harry feel so much better.” And, to be sure, a cool, sharp wind blew across the veranda.

  The doctor stood at the top of the steps, bowing at them. “How … is … he?” he asked. “Very well?”

  Linda stood up. “He isn’t very well,” she said quickly. “He’s not well at all, he’s exactly the same. He can’t eat. Can’t you give him penicillin? Can’t you give him something?”

  “Run along upstairs, doctor,” Madame Foss said, interrupting. “Run along up and fix him up. Did you get my toothbrush?”

  “Oui, madame,” he said, smiling and bowing again, and produced a red toothbrush in a plastic cylinder from his coat pocket. With a deep bow, he handed it to her.

  “Oh, you’re an angel!” said Madame Foss. “A Dr. West, my favorite kind—and red, my favorite color. Now run along up to our patient.”

  “I brought new medicine,” the doctor said, bobbing up and down in front of Linda. “Very good, I hope.”

  “Yes,” she said angrily. “I hope so too.” She turned away from him.

  “Only you could save him, bless you,” said Madame Foss. “You’re Gemini, and that gives you brains.”

  The doctor bowed himself through the door and into the house, and Heaven Hill followed him, a few steps behind.

  The clouds were now racing in very quickly from the east, and the sky had grown much darker. Suddenly, with a great explosive sound, the rain came down. Lashed by the wind, in giant pellets, it blew in across the open porch. Madame Foss tiptoed to Madras. “Madras?” she said. “Oh, he’s dead to the world. Should I leave him here, do you think? Oh, well, I might as well. If he gets wet it’ll cool his skin, and he’ll feel better when he wakes up.” Moving about the veranda, she began closing the heavy wooden storm shutters across the windows. “My poor husband,” she said, reaching across him to close a shutter.

  “Is he really your husband?” Linda asked.

  “He’s as good as any!” Madame Foss said sharply. “Now don’t you criticize! You know, I’ll bet you’re Pisces. Pisces are always the critical types.”

  When they were in the house and had shut the heavy door behind them the air was still very close and warm, but it was full of noise now from the storm outside. The lounge was dark, and the electric bulbs—too weak to light the room anyway—were flickering. Linda sat down in one of the perspiring leather chairs. “Madame Foss,” she said, “you’ve got to listen to me. I’ve got to get Harry off this island, and you’ve got to help me. Madame Foss, I don’t know what you think of me, but you’ve got to help another human being! You must know where I can get two hundred dollars. You said your father owned the bank here.”

  “My father was a planter,” Madame Foss said. “He was Danish, you know, and the Danish are the solid types. Now my mother, she had Gypsy blood. A stroke of the tarbrush, some said, but it wasn’t true—it was Gypsy blood in her.”

  “You’re not answering my question!”

  “My father was a substantial man, as all Danes are,” Madame Foss said. “But that doesn’t make me a Mrs. Moneybags, my pet. I’ve had a slow season here,” and she nodded significantly at Linda as if to say that Linda, to a large extent, had been to blame. “All I own is this hotel and the jewels the captain gave me, and I’d never part with either.”

  Linda sighed and lighted a cigarette. “I’m ready to give up,” she said. All around the house there was the deafening pummel of the blowing rain and the slap of palm fronds against the roof and walls.

  She knew all at once what she wanted of the storm. She wanted it to worsen. Sitting there in the damp, fitful wind that
had crept into the room now, even through the bolted shutters, wind that stirred the heavy curtains and lifted the corners of the table doilies, riffled the pages of the old magazines that were scattered about the tables—and hearing a new sound, which was the human whispering and moaning of the native women in the kitchen who chanted against the storm and sat with their heads covered with bits of sacking and flannel to ward off the evil eye—she wanted the storm to take the house. She wanted the waves to plunge over the sea wall, leveling it, to batter against the stone walls of the hotel and rip the heavy shutters from their hinges. She would run to Harry first and lift him from his bed, and together they would be borne by the wind through the open window, into the storm, across the submerged courtyard, into the waves. She wanted the waves to sweep them, with the house, into the wild and wailing sea, and to see all of them, sobbing and screaming (except for her; she would not scream; she would smile), tossed among the floating palm fronds and debris, past the tops of trees, and out into the incalculable darkness beyond. Wordlessly, smoking her cigarette, she urged the sea outside to come closer, closer.…

  But the sea was not obeying her, and the sound outside was steady and unchanged. And then, with a little gasp that was neither of fear nor of joy she realized that she had just heard the sharp ring of the telephone.

  Madame Foss smiled. “There he is,” she said. “Your daddy. See? I told you your call would have its turn.”

  “Would you answer it, Madame Foss? Please? It—it might not be he.”

  Madame Foss stood up and went into the little vestibule where the telephone was. When she came back her face was beaming. “It’s him all right!” she said. “He’s on the phone, pet!”

  Linda stood up. She walked slowly into the dark little vestibule and closed the door behind her. She rested her cigarette on the edge of the telephone stand and sat down in the small, stiff-backed chair. The receiver lay on the table and, very carefully, using both hands she reached for it and picked it up. She put the mouthpiece to her lips. “Hello?” she said.

  An angry electric crackle answered her and, from somewhere far beyond it, a buried voice was saying unintelligible words. “Allo?” she said. “Allo? Avez-vous mon numéro—à New York? Hello?”