The Prince

by R. M. Koster

  “What’s he saying?”

  I pushed the case up onto the pier. “He says hurry up. The night’s almost over.”

  “Ya fuckin’ A,” said Duncan. “Ya fuckin’ A.”

  Three twenties in my pocket. Another case up onto the dock, and with each one I could feel the boat lighten. Bending and lifting smoothly while the pistol eye followed me.

  And when the last case was up on the pier and the last twenties were stuffed in my pants, and when I’d started the engine and untied the line and run the boat out from the pier, the man with the flashlight cupped his left hand to his mouth and cried, “Adios, gringos de mierda!”

  “He says, ‘Goodbye, shitty gringos,’” I told Duncan. “I guess he thinks I’m a gringo, too.”

  “That’s ‘cause you’re such a mean bastard, kid. Now let’s see some of that money.”

  We ran back down the coast with a following wind and the current the navy didn’t know about, and raised Puerto Ospino just after dawn and ran the boat in onto the beach and threw the anchor up on the sand and hiked back to town, Duncan carrying his shotgun wrapped in a poncho and me with the guard’s revolver stuck in my pants and my shirt flapped over it. We had a meal there and a shave and caught the eight o’clock bus for the capital, dozing all the way past Córdoba, while the bus rattled between rain-soaked fields, through muddy pueblos mashed beneath gray clouds. It was after dark when we passed the road in to Medusa Beach. I nudged Duncan and called for the driver to let me out, and when the bus lurched away, there was no light nor any sound but the high wail of cicadas and the pounding of my heart.

  I stumbled off through the scrub, bearing slowly to my right for two or three hundred yards, hitting the beach road well in from the guard post. It was seven miles to the villa, and I jogged most of the way, switching the revolver from one hand to the other. When I could hear the surf, I left the road and circled down to the beach. The wall around the villa had glass shards set in cement at the top of it, but there were only a couple of strands of barbed wire over the beach gate. I went in between the wire and the top of the gate, tearing my shoulder but no worse than Angela’s fingernails did later. No dogs, because Alejo hated them, and the lights were out in the guards’ cottage to the left of the villa.

  The light from Angela’s room flowed through the open French window across the terrace and seeped into the shallow end of the pool. Tango music moaned in the lulls between breakers. I went across the terrace with a roll of surf. The screen door was ajar. Angela lay naked on the bed with her hands clasped under her neck and her right elbow just touching the phonograph on the night table. I went in with the revolver in one hand and seventy-two twenty-dollar bills baseballed in the other.

  “What do you want?” she asked, the boredom in her voice wilting my gun barrel.

  “You!” said I, and threw the money over her.

  She rubbed the money over her as if it were beauty cream. “Here I am.”

  I took her by the arm; my hand was shaking. “In his bed.”

  Angela smiled to herself and shook her arm from my melting grasp and brushed the bills from her body and rose and led me into the adjoining bedroom. There she turned and passed her hand before my face, and I sank onto the bed, unable to move or speak. She took the revolver out of my hand and laid it on the floor. Then she opened my shirt and drew off my shoes and trousers and played oboe scales on me till my teeth ground. She mounted me and knelt Kali-smiling and immobile, milking me slowly, while I tried to move and begged silently for her to kill me, and the rotting corpses under Alejo’s bed shivered in their winding sheets and moaned for their turn, until she drew her lips back over her pointed teeth and whispered, “Now,” and I flung my soul up into her.

  She pinched me out and jumped off and danced back into her room, returning after a bit with the money to switch on the lamp and sit down, golden haunch beside my head and lithe tail twitching on the bed sheet. She stacked the bills between her knees, Jackson’s eyes on her target, moving her lips with each one. Red blotches burned over all my body.

  “You’d better go now,” she said, folding the bills. “The guards.”

  I nodded and dressed quickly and slunk away.

  I went to a corner of the villa wall and scooped out a hollow for my body in the sandy earth and lay there with beating heart while the tangos repeated themselves like an object set between two mirrors, their sad strains rhythmed by the beat of the surf. At length her light went out, I crept back to her door, listening for her breathing. When at last she slept, I stripped off my clothes and plunged for her. Then, as I spitted her, she began to change shape: swan, heifer, lioness, and sow, wriggling serpent, bucking mare, clawing panther, each transformation raising my blood, but I held on to myself through everything, until she saw defeat, fading back to woman, and I whispered, “Now,” and she threw back her head, sobbing.

  Later, she told me about Alejo’s wound and much else, all I asked her, and we made love again, playfully, with affection. At dawn I left her sleeping hunched up like a little girl and stumbled out onto the terrace to dress. I was ten yards from the beach gate when one of the guards came out of the cottage and covered me with his submachine gun. He and his chums punched me around a little while the Guardia truck was coming to take me to jail in the capital, but I was too tired to care, and too happy, for all the blotches were gone from my body.

  19

  Jaime is full of apologies about his absence. Marta sent him to the pharmacy. Came to me the moment he got back and has his shoes on to prove it.

  Bundles me up in his arms for the infant-lift to the ground floor. One step at a time, feeling with muffled toes. Nestles me in my spanking collapsible runabout and rolls me to the dining room.

  A room I like. Massive colonial table with breakfront; heavy chairs whose carved backs rise above your head. Permanence and formality.

  “All journalists are animals,” says Marta, sipping milk tea. “Pancho Cepillo is a pig. Isn’t that right, Kiki?”

  Hearty good-mornings from the film-makers. Double-strength smiles for use with freaks and cripples. Sprayed my way as Jaime parks me at the head of the table.

  “What kind of animal were you, Feel? When you were a journalist.”

  Phil flashes her a grin. “A wolf, I guess.” Then to me: “Marta’s been telling us about the filthy smear in Patria this morning. They hit pretty low here.”

  “In the States they’d say I was soft on communism. It’s just a question of different values.”

  Marta translates my heehaws, then asks in Spanish if I want a Librium. I shake no. A cigarette would be nice, but it makes a poor spectacle. Have to have it held to my lips, like the moribund second lead in a war movie.

  “Me estás bravo?” Feeling my face with soft eyes. Strange girl, scalds then soothes.

  “No. I’m not angry.”

  “Different values, different styles,” says Phil. “I guess it’s all politics, but the style here seems more like quattrocento Italy than the States.” He looks to Marta for approval and gets a bored stare. Sure sign they went to bed together last night. Her bitchiness varies directly with degree of intimacy. But if she smiled at him, I’d take that for a sure sign too. “I guess we’ll have to soak up the mood.”

  Carl slurps up coffee; Sonny scoops up eggs. Phony Phil does all the talking. But why call him phony; because he humped Marta? Assistant director when Elena was Carlotta, Empress of Mexico, last summer, and sold her the idea of a TV documentary on our election. Expenses and a cut of the sales. With Elena narrating he ought to make money. Probably knows what he’s doing and is no phonier than anyone else.

  “I’d like to look around today, until the rally of course. Can I borrow Marta?”

  Borrowed her last night, didn’t you? Off the plane forty minutes, and you had her out on the town. Or were you already screwing her in Los Angeles? “Up. To. Her.”

  He looks across, eyes raised hopefully. Good-looking fellow with his youthful grin and silky beard. Proba
bly went down on her with it last night and was disappointed by her reaction. Could have told him Marta doesn’t like tricks. Now she shrugs why not, and he grins happily. Perhaps she’ll take to that grin and marry him, and they’ll have babies and fights and infidelities. In short, live like other people. Better for her I suppose than tending a plant.

  “But if you could manage a few questions first … I’d like to get some things straight.”

  Worried look from Marta. “Te cansarás.”

  “No. I won’t get tired. What tires me is being a cripple when inside I feel as normal as him. Come here and help me. Tell him I’ll answer anything he wants.”

  “Ya, Kiki.” She tells him and pulls her big chair next to mine.

  Phil plucks a ballpoint from Carl’s shirt pocket and takes a notebook from his own. “The Alliance is your father and the Coalition is President Fuertes. Right?”

  Nod.

  “Your father was deposed from the presidency twice, and then he decided to stay in retirement and pass the baton to you. Okay?”

  Another nod, for the viewers needn’t know that the stars had informed him it would be a bad year.

  “Then you were shot while campaigning. Like Robert Kennedy.”

  “Mine was a bit botched. We’re poor on quality control here.”

  Marta translates like a professional interpreter, not putting it into third person, simply repeating my words.

  “And now your father has come out of retirement to end the corruption of the Fuertes regime and redress the injustice of your, er, injury.”

  Bravo! Much better than that Alejo wants to get in once more before he dies. And Elena will recite it with conviction.

  “Now, according to Economist, this Alliance is built around the Tinieblista Party but includes parties directed by men who helped depose your father in 1953.”

  “’52.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. That these men are supporting your father and financing him. Why?”

  “It goes back to the last election.” Marta leans in, because I lose control as I raise volume. “Four years ago Pepe Fuertes had nothing to run on but his dead brother León.” Lifting the words. Pushing them up to Marta like cases of whiskey. “During the campaign he accused both me and the other candidate, Felíx Grillo, of that assassination, which, by the way, I had nothing to do with. Being out of the country. And accustomed to settling, differences face to face.”

  No odd looks from Marta. Translates as I tell it, making up for this morning’s nastiness.

  “Who did shoot León Fuertes?”

  “Not shot, blown up. Plastic wired to his car. He drove his own car, like Janio Quadros. To save state funds and show he was a man of the people. No one knows who did it. Probably a foreigner. Since Tinieblans, as you see, are sloppy assassins. As for who ordered it, or paid for it, that too’s a mystery. There are numerous candidates. You’re not important in Tinieblas if you haven’t been accused, or at least suspected. I believe it was some people from Miami. Who were running the casinos here, along with other ventures. León threw them out. But maybe it wasn’t them. There are always people who want the President dead. Tinieblas is no more civilized than the United States.”

  “Touché.”

  People who grin too much come to look like hyenas. Blimpish confidence of healthy gringo interviewing greaseball basketcase; when it’s punctured, giggles whistle out. Marta may sift some suffering into his life. Make an artist of him. “But as I say, Pepe had nothing else to run on. A clever dentist with a clubbed foot. Yet he wanted to be President. The Tinieblan vice. Being León Fuertes’s brother wasn’t even enough to get him the Progresista Party nomination. León founded it, but Carlitos Gavilán helped build it. So Pepe made a deal with Carlitos. He said, ‘Let me run this year, and we’ll milk the Fuertes name and win, and you can be President in four years.’ That’s how he got the nomination. But he needed more. Because while the Progresistas were the best organized, thanks to Carlitos, the Tinieblistas were the biggest. Always were and still are. And I was quite popular. As a defender of Tinieblan sovereignty.”

  “In the flag riots, right?”

  “All over the world nations fly their flags on their territory. One takes that for granted. Except here. When I carried the Tinieblan flag onto a portion of Tinieblan territory known as the Reservation, United States citizens started a riot.”

  “There seem to be two sides to that story.”

  “Naturally. A right one and a wrong one. We had best get back to Pepe.” Phil would like to argue. He’s made himself an expert by studying the back issues of Time. “Pepe needed more. So he approached Ignacio Hormiga. Who controls the Reformista Party. Don’t let the name confuse you. Nacho doesn’t want to reform anything. He has too much money for that. Pepe made a deal with Nacho. He said, ‘Support me now, and I’ll win, and in four years I’ll support you.’ That’s how Pepe got the Reformista nomination. But he wanted more. So he approached Luis Felipe Gusano. Who was President from 1944 to 1948. And who controls the Movimiento Civilista Conservador, the Civil Conservative Movement. And who owns a TV station. Pepe made a deal with Lucho. He said, ‘Support me now, and I’ll win, and in four years I’ll support the candidate of your choice.’ That’s how Pepe got the nomination of three parties and campaign funds and a TV station. By promising the same thing to three different people. Dáme agua, Martita.”

  “Wait!” says Phil as she gets up. “This is terrific!”

  “Kiki wants water.”

  “There’s water here.” He swings the pitcher over.

  “Fool.” She turns away toward the kitchen to get one of my glass straws.

  “I’m sorry. Are you sick?”

  I shake my head. And concentrate to keep it from flopping. Not sick, just helpless, and perhaps I ought to thank you for forgetting it. Sonny and Carl don’t enjoy looking at me, especially when Marta hunches near my lips to collect my whispers, but Phil shows no disgust. Either totally insensitive and thus unable to imagine himself in my place, or so sensitive he identifies and treats me as a human being.

  “What do you think of that story?” He turns to Carl, who tries to lounge against the upright chair back. “Terrific, huh?”

  “Sounds like Arnie Schicksal.”

  “Right!” He turns back to me. “You know Schicksal. You know how he got his start? He moved into an empty office at Magnetic without anyone knowing he was there and started calling up stars. He called up Gregory Peck and said he had Ava Gardner and John Wayne and Lana Turner for a film, and would Peck like to be in it too. Then he called up Wayne and Gardner and told them he had Peck. Then he called …”

  He tells me who Schicksal called while Marta pours me water and puts the straw in the glass and holds it for me to sip. Child’s gift of enthusiasm, and as an artist he naturally admires successful con men.

  “… every star in Hollywood, and the picture grossed fourteen million. But this Fuertes has him beat.”

  “He’s a thief,” says Marta.

  “Of course he’s a thief. But it’s a terrific story.”

  “Phil wishes he were a thief,” says Sonny. He is a short, skinny fellow with large ears and a pointed face. Carl calls him Superrat. “When we were in the Army, he had a plan for robbing the Fort Ord payroll. Then he didn’t have the guts to do it and made it into a movie script.” He lights a cigarette, throws the match into his empty coffec cup.

  “Dáme un cigarillo, Marta.”

  “No debes fumar.”

  “Y tú no debes joder tanto.”

  She takes a Galoise from the silver cup on the breakfront and lights it with the silver Ronson and holds it to my lips. Sweet blue smoke and slight dizziness. Two puffs are enough.

  “So Fuertes stole three political parties and a TV station.”

  I would have won anyway.”

  So he had you shot.”

  I shake my head. Because if Pepe had arranged for Ñato to shoot me, he would have arranged for someone to shoot Ñato. And Ñato didn’t
need Pepe’s encouragement. And the radio report said I’d been wounded in the shoulder—Alfonso fixed that—and when Pepe heard it down in Selva Trópica, he bet Carlitos Gavilán a case of whiskey I’d set it up, and had myself knicked in the shoulder to win a few more votes.

  “Fuertes wasn’t behind it?”

  “The French have a saying, Feel.” Marta is furious. “It goes, ‘One doesn’t speak of rope in the hanged man’s house.’”

  “It’s all right, Marta. Let him ask what he wants; you just translate. Do you think that if no one mentions it, it will go away?”

  “Él solo piensa en su preciosa películas!”

  “Of course he’s thinking of his movie. Trying to find the hero and the villain, make reality fit together like a work of art. That’s his business. If he’s any kind of a man he won’t forget his business just because he went to bed with you last night.”

  “Maricón de mierda!” And goes on in Spanish: “You have to throw that up to me! You told me yourself to go out with him, and what I do with my body’s my own business! If you have to be jealous, go scold your wife!”

  Even gringos understand that tone. Carl gets up and strolls to the living room. Sonny follows. “Look,” says Phil, “if I said something wrong …”

  Hard for Marta to stop once she gets started. “I suppose I ought to burn myself like a Hindu woman because you’re impotent! Yes, I went to bed with him! Yes, and I liked it! More than with you, with all your he-man crap!”

  Ought to translate that for Phil. With a gloss on the perils of machismo.

  “Look,” he says, “maybe we ought to …”

  Sponge up her hate with steady stare. Whom does she hate more, herself or me? The way to stop her is never to let her know when she’s hit a nerve. “Can we go on now?”