The Congo Venus

by Matthew Head

  The other pilot we put up that week-end was a trim, medium-sized, nice fresh-looking boy that I just remember as Bev, short for something unfortunate like Beverly, I suppose, and he followed along in Tiny’s wake, managing by sheer navigational agility to avoid being caught up in his slipstream. He looked a little embarrassed for Tiny and very much on the alert as if he were ready to step in and take hold if Tiny got altogether out of control.

  Around five o’clock when we were getting ready to close up the office, Bev and Tiny came in and said thanks a lot for the invitation to supper but they thought they would go down to the ABC Hotel where the other pilots were staying, and join forces with them.

  “Yeah, man!” Tiny bellowed. “Cain’t waste no time when you need it the way I need it! Got to start lookin’ now!”

  He blew out the door. Bev followed him, and turned and gave us a half-apologetic look just before he disappeared. I said to Tommy Slattery, my boss, at the next desk, “Do you think we really ought to let something like that loose around here?”

  “He won’t have any luck,” said Tommy, who had a profound knowledge of such things.

  “He’s going to disgrace us, though,” I said.

  “He’s not our responsibility,” Tommy said. “Forget it. He’s an ass but we can’t do anything about it.”

  We went over to the quarters, to the dining room, and had our usual before-dinner argument about the Old-Fashioneds, Tommy claiming it was important to dissolve the sugar in a teaspoonful of sparkling water, when it is obviously ridiculous that that little bit of sparkling water could make any difference in that much drink. We sat there drinking them for a while and I had almost forgotten about Tiny when Tommy said all of a sudden, “You know, that guy’s pathetic,” and in a way I guess he was.

  Pathetic or not pathetic, Tiny wasn’t something I felt sorry for or friendly toward, that night at the party at the Club. These parties were never any good anyway, for my money. In the first place you danced to the same twenty or thirty scratched, worn-out old phonograph records every night, since you couldn’t get new ones during the war, and they were piped through a beat-up loud speaker that brought out the worst in them, and when you bring out the worst in a saxophone, you’ve really brought out something terrible.

  Even with a decent band, the parties would have been monotonous and all alike. During the first part of the evening there would be some of the genteel young ladies of the city there, always with their mothers looking hawk-eyed at the ringside, and then about midway of the evening these girls would all be taken home and put to bed under padlock. Then for the next couple of hours it would be all the brighter married set and the bachelors, with a pretty heavy concentration of effort at the bar. Then the husbands and wives who were really interested in staying married to one another would leave, and the dregs of the party would go on and on with everybody getting mixed up with everybody else. There would be maybe a couple of quarrels and there would be a lot of unbecoming letting down of hair all over the place, until finally the whole thing would grind to an end and everybody would go home frustrated and feeling like hell. The most you could hope for would be that you might get involved in some new difficulty which would complicate your life for the next week or so to the extent that for a while you could substitute a kind of excited apprehension and remorse for the standard variety of ennui. So, in many respects, it was like the usual country club party in American suburbia, except that if you just had to go somewhere Saturday night, there wasn’t anyplace else to go. There was the hotel, and the terrace there was pleasant, but it closed at midnight and also it was public, and what I am talking about is the elite, not the hoi polloi.

  I put off going to the club this night as long as possible, by going.to the movie first. The film industry’s export policy to the Congo seems to be to start at the bottom and make every effort to keep from working up. This one was Anna Neagle in Irene, which I remembered from years back as the worst movie I had ever seen, and it still held the record. It was comforting in a way because I could sit there and reflect that there were people more unfortunate than I, namely Miss Neagle and anybody else who had got involved in that quicksand, while all I had to do was sit in an uncomfortable chair and watch them struggle. Then when it was over, I made the rounds of the café terraces, hoping as I always did that the Hausa men, the vendors of curios who lined up and spread out their wares on the pavement, might have something better than the badly cured leather and routine ebony elephants which were their stock in trade. I found a little ivory pig that wasn’t too bad. I didn’t see Tiny or Bev or any of their friends at any of the cafés so I supposed they were already at the Club. Finally I couldn’t find any other way to kill time so I went there myself.

  The party was entering its tertiary stage, and Tiny was there, all right. He was dancing with Liliane Morelli and there wasn’t anything casual about it. He was making the most obvious kind of direct frontal attack in full force. Everybody was watching them, and anybody but Liliane would have found some way to get away from him. There was something in his attitude that said, “Look at me, folks”; he seemed to me to be less fascinated with Liliane than with the idea that Lieutenant Tiny Malcolm was putting on quite a show and making quite a conquest for one and all to see. The way he danced around and the way he concentrated on Liliane, never looking away from her, and talking a blue streak all the time and grinning, and sometimes whispering in her ear—the way he did all this, he was asking you every minute to notice that this American pilot was quite a man and that he was certainly giving Madame Morelli the business. Now and then he would stop talking long enough to get cheek to cheek, then he would close his eyes and look dreamy and try some fancy step or other.

  I must say for Liliane that even if she didn’t have the sense to get away from him, she was only allowing herself to be propelled around the floor, rather than co-operating one hundred per cent. When Tiny lunged or whirled or dipped, she managed to take the edge off his excesses by resisting a little bit, but it was still a gruesome spectacle. He was making her look big and awkward, but she didn’t look bothered or embarrassed, and she listened to him with steady interest, as if she enjoyed the attention, and I guess she did, because that was what she loved more than anything in the world, attention.

  Bev was dancing too, and when I caught his eye he gave me a quick smile and jerked his head in the direction of Tiny as if to say that it was pretty funny but everything was under control. The rest of their bunch was either dancing or sitting at their big table, and it was as quiet a night as I had ever seen at the Club, although there was the usual ruckus at the bar.

  Morelli wasn’t there, at the bar or outside on the veranda or anywhere. But then he seldom was. Sometimes he would bring Liliane, then disappear early while she stayed on, or sometimes she would tag along with a party of two or three couples, maybe with an escort or maybe not. That wasn’t too unusual around town, but with Liliane it was a regular thing.

  I fooled around outside, where it was cooler and I wouldn’t have to see Tiny. I talked to people I knew, for maybe half an hour or forty-five minutes. Then I decided I couldn’t stand the sound of the music any longer so I said good night to a couple of people and went to get the car. That night I had the discouraged old Dodge we rented at the office, and when I went to look for it in the Club’s parking lot, it was gone. I hadn’t locked it because I didn’t want to carry the keys around, and anyway you didn’t bother to lock your car because the idea of a car theft in Léopoldville was ridiculous. There were so few cars that any one of them could be spotted quickly, and there wasn’t anywhere to drive a stolen car after you had it. I knew right away what had happened.

  I went over to the table where a couple of the pilots were sitting and asked them if they knew where Tiny was. I noticed that Bev was still out there dancing.

  The pilots said Tiny had just that minute left, with the job he had been dancing with. They looked surprised and said he had gone in my car, and that he had said it was all r
ight with me.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I just wanted to be sure.”

  I decided to let Bev do his own worrying when he noticed Tiny was gone, and went out and found a taxi and went home.

  It was around two that morning, about the time the parties at the Club usually broke up, when I heard a car, not ours, drive up, and then drive away. I was in bed, with the light out, but not asleep, and in a couple of minutes I heard somebody walking quietly outside my room. The outside door was open but the screen was latched; a vague silhouette appeared back of the screen, and I recognized Bev, even before he spoke. He tapped on the screen with one finger and whispered, “You awake?” If there was any real trouble, anything I could do anything about, I knew Bev would wake me, but if there wasn’t anything to do, I didn’t even want to talk about it. I just lay there in the dark, watching Bev while he watched me, and after a moment he went away, and I heard the door to the room he and Tiny shared open and close.

  Later I woke up to the sound of our car going into the garage, and saw by my bedside clock that it was four o’clock. I heard Tiny blundering along in the dark and going into his and Bev’s room. Immediately there was a murmur of voices. For a minute they raised quickly, although I couldn’t catch the words, then they shushed again. I was wide awake, and good and curious, and getting mad when I thought about Tiny, so I got up and put on a robe and went to their room.

  Bev was standing there in his skivvy shorts. He had a neat, tight-muscled little body that contrasted with Tiny’s big lumpy-looking one, as Tiny sat there on the edge of the bed, in his stocking feet, fumbling soggily at his shirt buttons. Bev was tight-lipped and flushed, standing there glaring down at Tiny, but Tiny was looking down and mumbling and breathing heavily, in a hang-dog kind of way.

  They both looked up as I came in, but then Tiny dropped his eyes again. Bev said to me, “I’m sorry we woke you up. And I’m sorry about the car too. I was just telling Tiny.”

  “Don’t worry about the car,” I said. I decided Tiny wasn’t drunk in spite of his soggy look. And whatever had happened, I decided that Tiny hadn’t had a very good time. I said to Bev, “Do you need anything—or anything?”

  “We’re all right,” Bev said. “I haven’t checked on the car.”

  Tiny mumbled, “Goddam car’s all right.” He pulled his shirt off at last, then pulled his skivvy shirt over his head, revealing a pinkish torso as big and meaty as something you’d expect to find in packer’s storage, with some excelsior-like matting spread across the chest.

  “I didn’t come to check on the car,” I said.

  There was one of those blank pauses, nobody doing or saying anything, and I knew that Bev was holding himself in, ready to light into Tiny again as soon as I left. I said, “Well —if you don’t need anything, I’ll go back to bed. See you in the morning.”

  I started to the door, but just as I reached it, Tiny called out, “Hey!”

  I turned, and Tiny was still sitting there like a lump, but he had raised his head and he said to me, in a forced voice, “You see that piece I was dancing with?”

  “I saw you dancing with Madame Morelli,” I said.

  “That was a piece,” Tiny said. “Look here,” he said, and he glared at me as if I had denied something he had said. One hand doubled into a fist and he pounded the bed gently with it alongside his thigh. “Look here,” he said, still glaring at me, “I got that piece tonight. I got it, see?”

  There wasn’t anything to say. I said, “You did?”

  “You damn right. And another thing,” Tiny said, in a strangled voice, “another thing, I want you to know—“ He took a deep breath, but when he spoke again his voice was more choked than ever. “I want you to know,” he managed to say, “it was lousy. Was it ever lousy.” He leaned forward at me and his voice rose and he said as loud as he could, “I got it the way I said I would, and it was lousy.”

  Then I saw the crazy fool was going to cry if I didn’t go, so I turned back to the door and stepped through and closed it behind me.

  I went back to my room and lit a cigarette and lay on the bed smoking it. But I didn’t put down the mosquito net, or turn out the lamp, or latch the screen door, because I knew I was going to have a visit from Bev before long.

  He turned up before the cigarette was finished, in pants and shirt and slippers now. He tapped at the door and came on in. He stood there looking uncertain and hesitant. I said hello, and sat up on the bed and pointed to a chair, but Bev shook his head and remained standing. He swallowed, and said, “I’m sorry about all this.”

  “Never mind. It really doesn’t make any difference about the car, and we’ll forget the rest.”

  “About what he just said, though.”

  “Yes, I know. That stank, all right.”

  Bev hesitated again, for a long minute, then said, “About that lady.” He had avoided “woman” and “girl,” but he said “lady” a little uncertainly. “I don’t know her or anything,” he said, “but I know Tiny.”

  He paused so long that finally I said, “What’s on your mind?”

  He blurted, “He didn’t get it, that’s all. I know Tiny, and I don’t know whether you know this—lady, or not, but I know Tiny, and I think I ought to tell you, I bet he didn’t get it the way he said he did.”

  “I had an idea he didn’t, myself,” I said. “Sit down. Tell me about it. What did he say?”

  Bev took a creaky rattan chair and looked more at ease. “He didn’t tell me anything he didn’t tell you,” he said. “Tiny isn’t so bad; you just have to know how to take him. He acted like a stinker—“

  “He sure did.”

  “—but you know how it is with some of them, they can’t get it no matter how hard they try.”

  “He tries too hard,” I said. I also felt like saying that Tiny was less interested in getting it than in having people think he was getting it, but I held that one in.

  “I guess he does,” Bev said. “But about tonight. If he had managed to get something, he’d have been blowing all over the place about how wonderful it was. But the way he said how lousy it was, that just means he didn’t even get to first base, that’s all.”

  All of a sudden I had a picture of the whole thing—the car parked at the roadside, probably a kiss or two, then Tiny’s awkward lunge, the hot, sticky, absurd struggle in the cramped space, Liliane straining away from the bristly meat of Tiny’s foraging mouth, the pawing, the pushing away, and always Tiny’s awkward, impotent, floundering simulation of the lust he wanted to feel, as it ebbed away before Liliane’s resistance. The male humiliation, the embarrassing ride home, the quick, relieved good night between two strangers.

  I said to Bev, “But where’s he been all this time?”

  He said, “Probably parked somewhere, just sitting the time out.”

  “No doubt. Well, forget it, Bev. As a matter of fact, I don’t know Madame Morelli except by sight.”

  But Bev still looked worried. “That’s good,” he said, “but it isn’t only that. You see, if Tiny got a chance to say that to anyone else, he said it. There’s no telling who he’s said it to.”

  “We’ll just have to hope not,” I said. “Do you want a drink or anything, Bev?”

  “No, thanks. I don’t think so.” He rose to leave.

  “There’s an icebox, if you’re hungry.”

  “You haven’t got a glass of milk?” he asked, as he might have asked if I had a chalice of ambrosia.

  “Just Klim,” I said—powdered milk that you stirred up with water.

  His face fell. “We have that at the base,” he said. “Well, I’ll go. I’m sorry about all this, really.”

  I said, “Sure there isn’t anything I can offer you?”

  “Not a thing. Good night.”

  “Good night, Bev. See you at breakfast.”

  But Bev and Tiny’s room was empty at breakfast time next morning, and Bev had left a note for me: “So long, Tolliver, many thanks, and I’m glad we got that bus
iness straightened out last night.”

  It might have been straightened out for me, but all over Léopoldville, from then on, there were a lot of people who would tell you all about Liliane Morelli and the red-headed American lieutenant.

  Miss Finney listened to the whole story of Tiny almost without comment. When I had finished, she sat there saying nothing, scowling across the river, which was disappearing rapidly into the approaching dark. The lights were coming on in Brazzaville on the other side. Miss Finney’s sun helmet was in her lap, and she drummed lightly on its corky surface with her finger tips, a sort of tap-tap-atappatappa-tap, in a native rhythm. I sat and waited, glad enough for a little rest from talking.

  Suddenly Miss Finney terminated the drumming with a couple of strong decisive slaps with the palm of her hand and said, “Let’s go. Emily hasn’t got enough sense to go get something to eat if I don’t lead her to it. You’re not tied up for dinner, are you?”

  I started backing the car out of the overlook and said, “No, I’m not. We might go to the Petit-Pont”—a very good little restaurant just outside town.

  “Good.”

  She hardly spoke on the way back to the hotel, except once when she said, “I don’t suppose it occurred to you to try to do anything about that Tiny business, did it?”

  “What could I do?” I asked. “Take an ad in the Voix d’Afrique? Something to whom it may concern, like In the opinion of the undersigned, in spite of appearances and statements to the contrary, Madame Liliane Morelli of this city did not accede to the desires of the American lieutenant, the way they’re saying all over town she did, in case you haven’t heard the gossip. Something like that?”