I realize I am one of the very few Americans who knows the sound of rocks cutting through flesh and striking bone. One of the few to count the costs of adultery.
Maria drops her beach towel on the patio floor, close to my deck chair, and straightens the towel’s edge with her toes. She has to have been a dancer before becoming Ransome’s bride and before Gutiérrez plucked her out of convent school to become his mistress. Only ballerinas have such blunted, misshapen toes. But she knows, to the right eyes, even her toes are desirable.
“I want to hear about New York, Alfred.” She lets herself fall like a dancer on the bright red towel. Her husband is helping Eduardo, the houseboy, load the jeep with the day’s gear, and it’s him she seems to be talking to. “My husband won’t let me visit the States. He absolutely won’t.”
“She’s putting you on, Al,” Ransome shouts. He’s just carried a case of beer out to the jeep. “She prefers St. Moritz.”
“You ski?”
I can feel the heat rising from her, or from the towel. I can imagine as the water beads on her shoulders how cool her flesh will be for just a few more minutes.
“Do I look as though I ski?”
I don’t want to get involved in domestic squabbles. The indios watch us. A solemn teenager hefts his machete. We are to have an uncomplicated view of the ocean from the citadel of this patio.
“My husband is referring to the fact that I met John Travolta in St. Moritz,” she says, defiantly.
“Sweets,” says Ransome. The way he says it, it’s a threat.
“He has a body of one long muscle, like an eel,” she says.
Ransome is closer now, “Make sure Eduardo doesn’t forget the crates,” he says.
“Okay, okay,” she shouts back, “excuse me,” and I watch her corkscrew to her feet. I’m so close I can hear her ligaments pop.
Soon after, Bud Wilkins roars into the cleared patch that serves as the main parking lot. He backs his pickup so hard against a shade tree that a bird wheels up from its perch. Bud lines it up with an imaginary pistol and curls his finger twice in its direction. I’m not saying he has no feeling for wildlife. He’s in boots and camouflage pants, but his hair, what there is of it, is blow-dried.
He stalks my chair. “We could use you, buddy.” He uncaps a beer bottle with, what else, his teeth. “You’ve seen some hot spots.”
“He doesn’t want to fish.” Ransome is drinking beer, too. “We wouldn’t want to leave Maria unprotected.” He waits for a retort, but Bud’s too much the gentleman. Ransome stares at me and winks, but he’s angry. It could get ugly, wherever they’re going.
They drink more beer. Finally Eduardo comes out with a crate. He carries it bowlegged, in mincing little half-running steps. The fishing tackle, of course. The crate is dumped into Bud’s pickup. He comes out with a second and third, equally heavy, and drops them all in Bud’s truck. I can guess what I’m watching. Low-grade arms transfer, rifles, ammo and maybe medicine.
“Ciao, amigo,” says Bud in his heavy-duty Texas accent. He and Ransome roar into the jungle in Ransome’s jeep.
“I hope you’re not too hungry, Alfie.” It’s Maria calling from the kitchen. Alfred to Alfie before the jeep can have made it off the property.
“I’m not a big eater.” What I mean to say is, I’m adaptable. What I’m hoping is, let us not waste time with food.
“Eduardo!” The houseboy, probably herniated by now, comes to her for instructions. “We just want a salad and fruit. But make it fast, I have to run into San Vincente today.” That’s the nearest market town. I’ve been there, it’s not much.
She stands at the front door about to join me on the patio when Eduardo rushes us, broom in hand. “Vaya!” he screams.
But she is calm. “It must be behind the stove, stupid,” she tells the servant. “It can’t have made it out this far without us seeing it.”
Eduardo wields his broom like a night stick and retreats into the kitchen. We follow. I can’t see it. I can only hear desperate clawing and scraping on the tiles behind the stove.
Maria stomps the floor to scare it out. The houseboy shoves the broom handle in the dark space. I think first, being a child of the overheated deserts, giant scorpions. But there are two fugitives, not one, a pair of ocean crabs. The crabs, their shiny purple backs dotted with yellow, try to get by us to the beach where they can hear the waves.
How do mating ocean crabs scuttle their way into Clovis T. Ransome’s kitchen? I feel for them.
The broom comes down, thwack, thwack, and bashes the shells in loud, succulent cracks. Ransome, Gringo, I hear.
He sticks his dagger into the burlap sacks of green chemicals. He rips, he cuts.
“Eduardo, it’s all right. Everything’s fine.” She sounds stern, authoritative, the years in the presidential palace have served her well. She moves toward him, stops just short of taking his arm.
He spits out, “He kills everything.” At least, that’s the drift. The language of Cervantes does not stretch around the world without a few skips in transmission. Eduardo’s litany includes crabs, the chemicals, the sulfurous pool, the dead birds and snakes and lizards.
“You have my promise,” Maria says. “It’s going to work out. Now I want you to go to your room, I want you to rest.”
We hustle him into his room but he doesn’t seem to notice his surroundings. His body has gone slack. I hear the word Santa Simona, a new saint for me. I maneuver him to the cot and keep him pinned down while Maria checks out a rusty medicine cabinet.
He looks up at me. “You drive Doña Maria where she goes?”
“If she wants me to, sure.”
“Eduardo, go to sleep. I’m giving you something to help.” She has water and a blue pill ready.
While she hovers over him, I check out his room. It’s automatic with me. There are crates under the bed. There’s a table covered with oilcloth. The oilcloth is cracked and grimy. A chair by the table is a catchall for clothes, shorts, even a bowl of fruit. Guavas. Eduardo could have snuck in caviar, imported cheeses, Godiva candies, but it’s guavas he’s chosen to stash for siesta hour hunger pains. The walls are hung with icons of saints. Posters of stars I’d never have heard of if I hadn’t been forced to drop out. Baby-faced men and women. The women are sensual in an old-fashioned, Latin way, with red curvy lips, big breasts and tiny waists. Like Maria. Quite a few are unconvincing blondes, in that brassy Latin way. The men have greater range. Some are young versions of Fernando Lamas, some are in fatigues and boots, striking Robin Hood poses. The handsomest is dressed as a guerrilla with all the right accessories: beret, black boots, bandolier. Maybe he’d played Che Guevara in some B-budget Argentine melodrama.
“What’s in the crates?” I ask Maria.
“I respect people’s privacy,” she says. “Even a servant’s.” She pushes me roughly toward the door. “So should you.”
* * *
The daylight seems too bright on the patio. The bashed shells are on the tiles. Ants have already discovered the flattened meat of ocean crabs, the blistered bodies of clumsy toads.
Maria tells me to set the table. Every day we use a lace cloth, heavy silverware, roses in a vase. Every day we drink champagne. Some mornings the Ransomes start on the champagne with breakfast. Bud owns an air-taxi service and flies in cases of Épernay, caviar, any damned thing his friends desire.