Again there was only the bursting, crackling noise in her ear. She jiggled the bar up and down. “Operator?” she said. The jiggling with her finger did no good, and the phone continued to produce only forest-fire sounds. Then she heard, or thought she heard, her father’s voice. “Daddy?” she cried. “Daddy, is that you?” She repeated it. “Daddy? Is that you?” And then, “Daddy, I can’t hear a thing! Daddy, what did you say?” And then, “Daddy—it’s Linda. It’s Linda, Daddy! Oh, this is hopeless! I can’t hear a thing you’re saying. Daddy—please—can you hear me? Daddy, don’t say anything, because I can’t hear you! But you can hear me, can’t you? Can you?” Then, in a burst, she said, “Daddy, don’t go on talking because I can’t hear a word! This phone just—listen, Daddy, just listen to me, if you can hear me. Oh, Daddy, I’m so scared! Daddy, perhaps I was wrong, but that doesn’t matter now. Harry is very sick. Daddy, I’m afraid he’s going to die! He’s lost so much weight! It was something he caught on the boat, Daddy, because when we came here he was sick, and he’s just kept getting worse. Nobody can—Daddy! I need a little money, Daddy. I need a little money. I’ve got to get him somewhere, to a doctor. To San Juan, or Miami—or even to New York if you’d send me enough money! Have you gotten my letters, Daddy? Daddy, you can’t go on blaming me for this forever! Oh, Daddy, it’s me—your daughter! Oh, remember … remember … oh, Daddy, please, for God’s sake, you can’t blame me forever! Daddy, is my mother there? Daddy, may I speak to my mother, please?” There was an exceptionally loud explosion of static in her ear, and she held the phone away, and she suddenly had a vision of the telephone lines that were strung across the island, lines that looked so old and frayed, with their insulation hanging from them in loops and swags and festoons—and she saw these lines now, the festoons swaying crazily in the storm, and thought, There are only these poor cords connecting my voice to his! And, whether the storm that instant snapped one of the rotting poles like a kitchen match or whether her father had simply hung up on her, she suddenly realized that the receiver she held was as dead and silent as a stone. She replaced the receiver slowly in its cradle and picked up her still-lighted cigarette.
When she came back into the lounge she saw that Madras had come in. He stood there, dripping wet, grinning at her foolishly and rubbing his eyes.
“Well,” Madame Foss said brightly, “we’re all set now, aren’t we? He’s sending you the money.”
“Nothing is set,” Linda said. “He’s not sending me anything.”
Madame Foss’s face fell. Her mouth quivered and her eyelids puckered. “Oh, pet!” she said, and Linda thought, Why, she really does care, after all! She cares a little, in her own way.
But then Heaven Hill came running down the stairs. “Doctor says come quickly!” she said.
“Take a grip on yourself, baby,” Madame Foss said. She lifted herself heavily out of her chair and, in a little procession, the four went up the stairs to Harry’s room.
His face was like wax through the curtain of mosquito netting, and his eyelashes were dusty with sleep and fever, and very still.
“Harry?” she said. “Harry?”
He opened his eyes. “I wish—” he was saying.
“What do you wish, darling?”
Madame Foss went to his bedside and lifted the curtain. “Your wish will be granted,” she whispered. “The stars say it. You’ll get your wish within a three.”
“Within a three? Do we still owe rent?”
“You owe me no rent,” Madame Foss said.
The doctor came and held Harry’s wrist. Suddenly Skydrop, who had been kneeling behind the curtain, sobbed loudly and ran out of the room. Heaven Hill followed her. Linda smoothed the covers on his bed, and said, “There, there, darling.”
His eyes were moving all over the room, at each of them standing there: at Madras in the corner, soaked to the skin; at Madame Foss, who was sweating and brushing the sweat away from her face with her ringed fingers all bedizened and bejeweled; then up at the little doctor, and then at last at her. “Why is everyone here?” he asked. “I’m glad to see you, Madras.” Madras bowed his head.
“And you,” his eyes said to her. And you. She felt the words and heard them, even though they were not spoken, and she knew what the words meant, and even the dust and the smell of chlorides and citronella and the heat and the sound of rain on the storm shutters, and the whole great stone room said it. And you, and of course you.
“My darling,” she said.
She looked at Madras. Bending, leaning, stooping forward so far, with his face so slippery and wet from tears and drink, he bent so far that his steel-rimmed spectacles slipped from his nose onto the bare floor. There was a little tinkle.
It broke like glass, that moment, and she stood there feeling as though the blood were being drained out of her and was spilling, this way and that, and that bits of herself were floating away as carelessly and fortuitously as dreams slip from the mind of the dreamer. She had the feeling all at once of hearing a life break, and she put her hands down hard on Harry’s shoulders to keep him from dying. And then, or maybe sooner, she knelt and placed her cheek beside him on the bed as a sort of an oblation, and she kept thinking, Why, why, why? And she looked at him and kept thinking, Why? The pestilence in the air seemed to rise around them both and fog them in like ships or statues, and she kept smelling sickness and death, sickness and death, sickness and death. The little doctor wrung his hands over her.
“Oh, he is dead, madame. Oh, he is dead.”
She stood up and admitted she knew it. She had paced that strip of floor, around the island of his bed, for days, waiting, watching for a portent, a sign, for a cloud to lift. It hadn’t, and she stood there now, numb and dry-eyed, waiting for grief to thunder over her.
In front of her a little parade was forming. Like ballet figures they moved across her vision—the two maids, Skydrop and Heaven Hill, and the old cook from the kitchen, and the girl who collected the washing, the little waitress, and the two little barefoot girls who gathered sticks from the beach every day for the fires, and one or two others she had barely noticed before. They moved slowly, in a column, to the bed. Then each knelt at the foot, briefly whispered something, placed a small object on the bed, rose, and moved on. They brought tiny packets tied in bits of bright doth and handkerchiefs, and left them across the bedspread in a straight, perfect line.
Linda took Madame Foss’s arm. “What are they doing?” she whispered.
“Offerings for the dead,” Madame Foss said. “It’s the custom.”
Linda picked up one of the little knotted sacks and heard the soft chink of coins inside.
“It’s money,” she said. “I can’t—”
“Hush,” Madame Foss said. “They bring it to you. You must take it.”
“I won’t,” she said. “I won’t take money from them. Tell them to take it away.”
“If you return it, the women will have a death come soon to someone they love. That is the belief.”
She shook her head slowly, uncomprehendingly, back and forth. No, it was too ironic. “No, no.…” she said.
“Quick,” Madame Foss said, “take it. They’re waiting.”
Slowly she reached down and picked up the little packets one by one and gathered them in her hands. She turned to the women. They faced her with downcast eyes, then turned away and filed slowly out of the room.
The rain stopped as quickly as it had begun, and the sun reappeared. Linda went downstairs and out onto the veranda outside the hotel and stood under the dripping bougainvillea vines. Madame Foss came out the door behind her and took her hand. “We are sorry,” she said.
Linda said nothing.
“The women share your grief this way,” Madame Foss said. “We all share it. You loved him. More than the stars.”
“Please, dear,” Linda said, “leave me alone for a little bit.”
“How much will you need to return to your father?”
“I’m not going bac
k to him.”
“You may stay here as long as you wish.”
“I can’t stay here, either. Just—just leave me alone, please.”
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know. Please—I want to be alone for a little while.”
After a while—after Madame Foss had left—she went down the steps and started down the road toward the pier. Bright patches of water lay evaporating in the hollows of the pavement and by the time she reached the pier every sign of the storm was gone. She stood looking out at the sea that was as still as death again, and pretty soon the boys from the docks were swarming all around the young American woman, saying, “Dive for coins, miss? Dive for coins?” She reached in the pockets of her cotton skirt, and began undoing one after another of the little cloth sacks. Why should anyone share my grief? she asked herself. My grief is my own. The boys flipped like porpoises from the pier as she tossed the coins to them.
But all the silver in the world scattered in the ocean wouldn’t bring him back. And when suddenly she saw her own pale reflection in that moon of blue water she too was moonlike, her face as round, as flat, as simple, and as humble as a penny, and she felt all at once deprived even of grief, as though grief had been delivered to her and she had succeeded in returning grief to its source without even once having felt its touch, and now there was nothing in the world to do but to say good-by. And the boys, seeing that she was out of coins, ran back and left her there saying good-by.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1967 by Stephen Birmingham
Cover design by Amanda Shaffer
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4049-5
Distributed in 2016 by Open Road Distribution
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Heart Troubles Page 18