Authors: John D. MacDonald
He knew her education had been good. From the things Enrique had told him, he knew she had been sensitive, imaginative and thoughtful. But this ’Cisca was a merry little thing, and her Spanish
was that of the shop girls. She prattled about the plots of the television she watched, the fan magazines she read. He took her to the beaches, to outdoor movies, and to the back country to fish in the drainage canals. Being with her was undemanding fun. And it was a relief after the demands of his work. He had developed contacts which gave him reliable information about developments in Cuba and infiltration and subversion in other Latin American countries. He was doing news coverage and feature articles in this field for a Miami paper, and freelancing for Spanish language newspapers and periodicals in Florida and New York. Lately he had been doing magazine articles evaluating the total situation and attempting to anticipate trends and policies. As he attempted to be both thorough and scrupulously honest, his work had begun to attract attention on a wider scale. It was almost a blessing that his work fell into an area which was taboo insofar as ’Cisca was concerned.
When the early spring had brought the first softness in the Florida air, he had become more aware of a problem which he had been trying to ignore. On the beaches her slender thighs were golden, impossibly smooth and unflawed. There was a special and sensual intricacy of curve and pattern and texture in the way her mouth was made. The ivoried eyelid and the dense curve of black lashes slid down over the healthy gleam of eye with a meaningful perfection that seemed magical. At any casual and accidental brush of her body against his, he could feel his heart bumping against the hard wall of his chest. His jaws would ache, and he could believe the touch had left a visible weal on his flesh.
He could not sleep as well or eat with as good appetite as previously, yet he knew that any attempt to seduce her would be an unthinkable crime. Not only was he under the obligation of the request Enrique had made the night before he was killed, but he knew that only a selfish monster would, for his own need and pleasure, take the chance of smashing the adjustment she had made to the world.
Soldier rape had driven her into the shadows, and she had found a way out. But quite evidently the new personality had no memory of rape, pregnancy or miscarriage. The physical act could not help but trigger the memories and destroy the new structure of personality.
And so he endured, sometimes half sick with desire, knowing it would be far easier to stay away from her, yet feeling the need to be with her and thus punish himself for his animality.
Two months ago, in mid-March, she had solved the whole matter with a blitheness and directness that disconcerted him as much as it pleased him. He had taken her bay fishing on her afternoon off, and then they had gone to a place which would broil their catch for them and which served cold draught beer in big chilled steins. Then he had to hurry her home because she was alarmed that she might miss the beginning of what she declared was her third favorite television program.
The show did not intrigue him. He sat on the couch, dulled by the afternoon on the water, by the beer and food. He fought to stay awake. Then he was awakened by the sudden warm weight of her on his lap, her arms around his neck. The set was off, the room dark. A weak lamp in her bedroom made a path of light out through the half-open bedroom door. There was a nervous edge to her small laughter, and an anxious quaver in her voice as she said in her butchered English, “What kind of boyfriend I’m telling Rosita I’m having, eh? Sotch a trouble her boy is giving her, I tell you, every minute. I see you looking to me with the quick little eye, eh? I wait, wait, wait. Nothings, eh? I am loving you, Kelleeeee, something tough. But ’Cisca is maybe a little scare now you theenk—I’m a bad theeng.”
As he held her, turned her to find her lips, telling her she was not a bad theeng, but indeed a very fine, a very splendid theeng, he realized with a shock and exultation there was nothing between the
warmth of her and the clasp of his hands upon her but a wispy sheerness of short nightie.
She was shaky and nervous, and quite unschooled in her role, but eager in a rather dogged and determined way, and intensely inquisitive. They were together many times before quite suddenly, a week later, it began to be right for her; and once she knew what was sought, and could identify the earlier warnings, it became vastly right, and after many times when she indulged herself to the point of drugging herself with pure and prolonged sensation, she quite suddenly and earnestly set about learning him as completely as she had learned herself, asking intent little questions about how this was for him, and that, and how near was he now.
During this past month, the second month of their lovemaking, they had gradually established agreeable physical patterns. Yet he felt a sense of loss he could not quite identify. This supposedly ultimate intimacy was less than the intimacy he had sought. She was as merry and happy as before. At the beach he had taught her an efficient crawl. In the bays he had taught her how to manage a spinning reel and play a fish. This bed business was apparently, to her, another activity they could share. She had a casual and willing acceptance of him whenever the time and the place was suitable, and she would talk of other things at times, and then become intent when passion began to become more immediate. Pleasure made her chuckle. And she took quite an obvious satisfaction in their being able to make love quite skillfully. She would tell him, with a little shading of regret, the moment she realized she would not be able to finish, then would settle herself to making it as enjoyable for him as she could, sometimes adding mischievous innovations.
When she had been ended, she liked to be held quietly for a little while, petted and kissed, but with hardly any more emotional content than in the cuddling of a trusting puppy exhausted by play.
It was all hearty and easy and most enjoyable, but once when he
was on the edge of sleep, where reality and fantasy are merged, not daring to let himself go to sleep because he knew he had to get up and leave her bed, he had the strange conviction that he had desired Francisca Torcedo y Sarmantar, but knowing the impossibility of ever possessing her, had eased the itch of wanting by taking this girl who now rested in his arms, a servant girl, one of the chunky little ones with a broad dusty pocked face, a willing laugh, a casual acceptance of him and his needs. So vivid was the fantasy that when he opened his eyes and saw the sleeping face of Francisca Torcedo y Sarmantar resting there in the crook of his arm, a face slender and delicate, marked by a thousand years of pride and breeding, he had the momentary conviction he had taken her by stealth, and should she awaken her eyes would go wide with terror and disgust, and she would sit up, arms across her delicate breasts, and scream and scream and scream.…
He awoke her. She smiled at him. She stretched luxuriously, held her fist in front of a yawn, craned her head and looked at the clock, then sat up quickly. “Kelleeeee,
querido!
The time!”
“I know.”
And he got up sleepily and dressed, and bent over her and kissed her. She ran her fingers through his hair and patted his cheek.
“Raoul, darling, do you think you can get off early enough to come take me to the Burton movie?”
“I’ll try.”
“Doesn’t she look to you—a little fat? Just a little?”
“Very very fat. You are much better.”
“You like a woman whose ribs show? You like these poor starved little breasts, like a school girl’s,
mi corazón?
”
“They, and all parts of you, are an elegance, truly.”
And now, in the slanting light of sunset, on the shallow porch, he perceived that elegance of her as she leaned against the post, hands in the skirt pockets, ankles crossed. In that convent school, patronized
by the daughters of the rich, they had been taught how to walk, enter a room, how to sit and rise gracefully. This training affected ’Cisca, the housemaid, only when she was in repose, he had noticed. She had somehow acquired the swift saucy walk of the shop girls, the extravagant conversational gestures of the hands, and the overly dramatic facial expressions they seemed to copy from the actresses they saw on television and in the motion pictures.
No actress, he realized, no matter how dedicated, diligent and skilled, could have immersed herself so totally in a role. One could comprehend it only by accepting the possibility that Francisca had become quite another person. It was as though the top thirty points of intelligence quotient and the top segment of emotional quotient had been lopped off. The trivia of life contented her. She had the unshakeable cheer and happy spirits it was said one could expect when a successful brain operation was undertaken to cure an anxiety neurosis which would not respond to other treatment.
Raoul Kelly tasted the bitter irony of this present relationship with her. And self-contempt. The government in Washington had wanted to set up a special study and investigation of the dynamics of the politics of poverty in Central and South America, the conditions which germinated seeds of revolt, riot and rebellion. But out of political opportunism the project had been killed in the Senate. Now a large foundation had taken over the project structure. They would base the project in California, and they had written him offering him a position of an importance which surprised him. He would be selecting, training and assigning field investigators, and directing the analysis of their reports.
He had temporized, asking for more time. A Raoul Kelly could not have dreamed of taking such a position newly wed to the daughter of Don Estebán Torcedo, and could he have done so, her value to his new career would have been inestimable. How would they accept a Raoul Kelly married to a housemaid, very lovely of course,
but withal a little cheap, shrill, trivial and a bit vulgar. And with absolutely no interest in his work, nor any comprehension of it. And with a frequent turn of phrase in English which would blanch the cheeks of the foundation types and the academicians.
The question he kept asking himself was whether or not she had become less important to him now that he had possessed her. But, of course, there was the hidden side of the coin: How important and how necessary had he become to her? It was a question she evaded so completely it was as though she could not understand what was being asked.
If he could not leave her behind, yet could not take her, then this turning point in his life would have to go by default. He yearned for a position of such importance, yet was objective enough about himself to know that aside from the challenge of it, a certain matter of personal vanity was involved. He was a short, chunky man, just a few inches taller than ’Cisca. Though agile and muscular, he had to fight a tendency to put on weight. His was a most ordinary latino face, a mix of the Caribbean races—dusky, coarse-grained skin, broad nose, high hard cheekbones, dark eyes with long lashes, dark hair beginning to recede. His body was heavily pelted with dark curly hair. His shoulders were thick, and his hands had the contours of labor in spite of the softness of the journalist. The very ordinariness of his appearance was an advantage in his present work. In the cantinas of the working men he was accepted, and he was told things few others could have learned.
Yet he was aware of the almost inevitable figure of a Raoul Kelly in the future, a short soft fat bald fellow who, by that time, would have had to have achieved an important professional reputation, or would find himself among so many others who had the same look, and who sat in the small cafés in the afternoon, drinking the small cups of thick black bitter coffee, making intricate and implausible plots to restore the old order, knowing yet never admitting they
were trapped in one of the little eddies created when the brute weight of history had rushed by them.
’Cisca said, “It is odd, no? Señora Harkinson seemed so eager when I was first working here to involve herself with men of wealth and importance, friends of the old politico who befriended her and built her the lovely house and died. She found no new friend of importance. She is no longer a young girl, of course. One can understand the affair with El Capitán. He is mature, powerful, handsome in a rugged manner. A convenient diversion for her, something which began before she found she could no longer afford to operate the boat the Senator gave her and then sold it. She has tamed El Capitán Staniker so he will arrive when summoned, go when she orders. In the beginning they would shout, and sometimes he would beat her. Then he became eager to please her in every way. But now why should she divert herself with this Oliver person? Her captain has been gone—it is over three weeks. She spends money on sailing lessons with the boy. I tell you,
querido
, that one does few things without purpose. And she should be busying herself to find a protector. The boat is gone, and the furs are gone, and many jewels are gone. Sometimes I have not been paid until something has been sold. Those times she was very nervous and very ugly and cruel. Now she is very nervous but very gay also. It is a difficult thing to understand.”
She moved to the door of the apartment and went inside, pausing to hold the screen door open for Raoul. The architect the Senator had employed had limited luxuriousness to the main house. The little apartment over the garage was of motel derivation, formica, standard fixtures and apertures, tough fabrics, vinyl flooring. She sat in the corner of the couch and tucked her slim legs up under her, pulled her sandals off and dropped them on the floor, still frowning slightly as she tried to puzzle out Crissy Harkinson’s behavior.
He went to the tiny kitchen alcove and took two cans of beer out
of the midget refrigerator, pulled the tabs off, went over and handed her one, saying, “Maybe she’s taking up with the kid to get her mind off worrying about Staniker.”
“Eh? Oh, I do not believe that is the way it is for her, truly. From the time El Capitán departed, she became more and more agitated. She walked restlessly, appearing suddenly to tell me things to do which were not needed. If I would wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes lights would be on in the house. She smoked much. All small things irritated her. And then, last Sunday, as she was becoming truly impossible, the news came of the boat from Texas being lost somehow. She said to me she was terribly worried about Captain Staniker. But how did she act? Still nervous, but she would hum little songs while pacing, and make large smiles at me and treat me kindly. She began this matter of the sailing lessons in the rented boat. Now she is becoming just a little bit ugly again, more so each day.”