“That makes my game with those soldiers sound pretty damned silly Raoul.”
“It was silly, of course. Idiotic, suicidal and foolish. I treasure it. The girls adored you for it. All Havana talked and laughed about it for weeks. One indignant tourist, armed only with rum, and three of Batista’s soldiers with Thompson submachine guns, all for the honor of a pretty Cuban girl.” He shrugged and sighed. “What made us think that was the most savage and dangerous of all worlds? Now it seems almost pure, something on a stage, with comedy uniforms.”
“Can you people work your way back to something easier to understand?”
His mouth had a sour curve. “It depends, I think, on how long and how hard we can laugh.” He looked around, then touched my arm. “I am getting signals from old friends. Do you have anything else to ask? No? Excuse me then. Come to our house soon, Travis. Nita will use the long words. She is in a strange limbo now, where neither Cubans nor Yankees can understand her. But she has become quite a good cook.”
By the time I reached the door, I looked back and saw Raoul hunched in fierce argument with men who all seemed to be speaking at once, in fierce low tones. God only knows how it will come out for them. All over the world are the fringe peoples, pushed out of their countries for varied reasons, each group thinking it the most hideous inequity since the world began, the most shameful oppression. In every tiny span of recorded history, the exiles have huddled and plotted, schemed and starved and died.
But perhaps it all used to be simpler to understand. Now the movements of nations have become like a huge slow solemn dance of the elephants, random power swaying in unpredictable directions, their movements obscured by a stifling rain of paper, pastel forms in octuplicate, programmed tapes, punch cards. Through this slow rain, in the shadowy patterns of the dance, scurry a half a billion bureaucrats, each squealing selfimportant orders. Beneath the wrinkled grey legs, ten thousand generals squat, playing with their war game toys. The billions of mankind sit in the huge gloomy reaches of the stands, staring without comprehension, awaiting the white blast that will char the dancers, end the act, and because tension and waiting can only be sustained so long, they make their own little games and charades in the stands, the charades of art, sex, money, power and random murder.
I went and sat in my old car of vulgar blue, and remembered the lovely, shy, mischievous face of Teresa, the night swim in a moonlight sea, the talk and the singing. I remembered her coming out of the sea in moonlight, combing her soaked hair back with her fingers, the phosphorescence twinkling around the wading thrust of her white thighs, seeing me waiting there, stopping, shielding herself for a moment with hands and arms, then lifting her chin and coming on toward me, boldly, making a single sound, deep in her throat, like a laugh. She loved her tropic sea and it had killed her dead, in the hot blazing days of August.
That’s why they can never make it. They kill off the good ones. They gut their dreamers. Their drab stone discipline is a celebration of mediocrity. If we can restrain ourselves from killing off our own rebels, our doubters and dreamers, all in the name of making ourselves strong, then we can prevail. But if we use their methods, then any victory will be but the victory of one iron symbol over another, and mankind will have lost the battle whichever way it goes.
I drove north at a sedate pace, measuring the new reality of Carlos Menterez y Cruzada, collector of gold, of women, and of many kinds of pills. He seemed the type who would have a special talent for survival. Bombs kill their chauffeurs. They catch the last flights out. They change their money in the right places at a favorable rate the day before the currency collapses.
I was very tired. I went back to Bahia Mar. As I approached the Busted Flush, I heard sweet and cautious singing, and I found that it was coming from my topside sun deck. I stepped over the chain, went aboard, and climbed the ladderway. In the starlight and the random lights of the yacht basin, I saw Meyer with four of the little seasonal girls, all bundled in sweaters, sitting on the deck in a close circle, singing one of the old English rounds Meyer liked to teach them. They were always about maidens fair, deadly knaves, lonely death in the castle tower.
They ended on a sweet synchronous chord of girl voices and Meyer congratulated them extravagantly. “Excuse the invasion, my boy,” Meyer said. “Junior here has a dull young man prowling around trying to create scenes. We’re in hiding. This group is in very good voice. Lassies, if any of you do not know him, this is the crude fellow who owns the boat. His name is McGee. Excuse me a moment. Practice that last one again, please.”
He took me over to a far corner of the sun deck. Behind us, the girl voices were heartbreakingly sweet and clear.
“A man named Branks was here, looking for you, Travis. He had some questions.”
“Such as?”
“Your habits, your livelihood. Rather a clever fellow, I suspect. He leaps on any nuance, any mild hesitation.”
“What kind of billing did you give me?”
“Why should I lie to him? I said you are a beach bum, a reasonably pleasant companion, that you seem to make a living from small speculative ventures, that you seem to enjoy practically anything, in moderation, in accord with your somewhat quaint standards of behavior.”
“You two had quite a chat.”
“It took a philosophical turn, the role of man in modern society, the decay of morals, the new permissiveness, group standards versus inner values. He said he would try to get in touch tomorrow.”
“Did he seem hostile?”
“Not at all. Not at all. Quite amiable, and curious. I can depart with my little flock now, or, if you feel festive, we can all go below, for an hour of song and discussion.”
“I don’t feel that festive.”
“Can I offer you a flower from my little garden? The one facing us, the alto, with the perfectly straight strawberry blonde hair?”
“Meyer, this is not like you!”
“She is more than old enough to vote, and she met you the other day and was curious about you, and she is in a horrid emotional state, on the verge of scampering off to commit untidy indiscretions with bad companions. Better a devil I know than several she doesn’t know. I cannot keep her in my little gaggle of sweet geese much longer. She is disaster prone, compelled by a bruised heart. Otherwise… I would not step so far out of character.”
I looked and saw the girl’s eyes intently watching me, the mouth making the round tones of the song, and was tempted. But any man who thinks of himself as therapy should not have a license to practice. If it could be guaranteed that she would remain a thing, a pleasure item, a recreation device-as recommended by Playboy, then the diversion would be so meaningless as to make the decision easy. But she would insist on being a person, a special soul hunting its own special agonies, and we would try to make those marks upon each other which prove that nothing is ever casual. I was wearing all the old marks I could handle, never, having been quite able to play the recreation game, not for itself alone. So let her go find her own untidiness, her own bad companions, as I had done in my own seeking way. Any bandage presupposes a wound, and in these brave, hearty days there are more than enough wounds to go around. So take your strawberry hair elsewhere, dear. McGee’s Clinic is closed for repairs.
“No thanks, Meyer.”
“Too bad. She is in need of a rare additive. Kindness. Scientific tests show that with that special additive-KDS we call it-any woman fresh out of the show room, right out of dealer stock, will travel an additional eight hundred and seventy-one yards before stalling.”
He repaired a shaky lyric, coached them in a chord, then trooped his little flock off and away, the girl voices calling their goodnights. One goodnight in a sad alto echoed in an empty corridor in my mind, and after I had at last fallen asleep in the vast custom bed in the master stateroom, I stood on a dream bridge and looked down and saw an open boat drift under the bridge on the black tide, full of a lost tumble of dead maidens, all with strawberry blonde hair, wide marbled eyes accusing.