Of course, when I looked at the painting more closely, I saw that what I’d taken for an impaled man was only an upended red wheelbarrow leaning against a post, its handles reaching in the air.
THE RECEPTION DESK itself was a long, polished mahogany counter backed by a framed mirror and the usual pigeonholes for keys and mail. No one was there, so after a moment I palmed the “Ring for Service” bell.
Immediately, from a room to one side of the mailboxes, a small man in uniform with swept-back grey hair emerged. He was quite handsome, except that where his nose should have been he wore a black leather cone tied behind his head with a lace. That made quite an impression on me, but I tried not to stare at the cone and concentrated on his eyes as I told him who I was.
“We’ve been expecting you,” he said. He had a pleasant smile and a lilting, nasal voice. Everything about him was pleasant except for that sinister cone. “Mr. Smith has reserved a room for you on the second floor. He’s left a message.”
He took a folded paper from one of the boxes and gave it to me. It was a brief note from Gordon, welcoming me and saying that a car would pick me up at six.
The little man now handed me my room key.
“The elevator’s in the hallway by the door, just past the mural,” he said. He smiled. “What do you think of our mural? It usually makes a big impression on visitors.”
I glanced towards it and made some flattering comment, happy not to have to avoid looking at his cone. I picked up my bag and began walking towards the hallway.
“The elevator’s around the corner to your right,” he called cheerily after me.
When I automatically looked back to thank him, I saw the man with his cone and then my own image, distantly reflected in the mirror behind him. I quickly found the elevator and pressed the solid brass number two.
MY ROOM IN THE Walner Hotel turned out to be cool and luxurious, with a big bed and heavy, expensive furniture. The bathroom had a dozen towels as well as soaps and shampoos. I lay down on top of the bed, enjoying the silence after the constant noise of travelling, and soon dozed off.
2
The bedside phone woke me: the voice of the little man with the nose cone informed me that the time was six o’clock and a car had arrived for me. I quickly pulled myself together and went down to the front door where a black limo with darkened windows waited. A chauffeur in a cap with a shiny visor showed me into the back seat. We drove west for a few miles into an area that gave glimpses of old trees and the manicured grass of a golf course. The houses were of a modern design and looked even bigger than those in the town. At one of these mansions the limo pulled into a long driveway and stopped beside a white-pillared portico.
I was halfway up the set of marble steps when the double doors were opened by Gordon Smith himself. He wore a dark formal suit rather than the tropical whites I associated with him. His hawk eyes that had seemed quite at home in the jungles of the south didn’t quite fit this civilized setting.
“Harry!” he said. “Good to see you.” His handshake was firm and cool.
He led me into a large white-painted hallway with a high skylight and open doors through which I could see spacious rooms. On the right was a wide stairway to the upper floor. Several discreet-looking paintings that might have been landscapes done in some abstract, geometrical style adorned the walls.
“This way,” said Gordon Smith.
We went through one of the doors into a room with fulllength windows looking out onto a neat lawn with trees and shrubs of the unobtrusive sort. The main furnishings of the room consisted of leather armchairs and white rugs. The paintings on the walls were watercolours of palm-clad tropical islands. Both the vegetation and the ocean were muted and tamed.
From a cabinet Gordon poured us both a glass of wine and we sat opposite each other on the leather armchairs. He inquired about my health and I assured him that I felt fine and was almost completely recovered from my sickness. I thanked him for his kindness in arranging the voyage for me.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” he said. “I’ve always found travel by sea to be a great way of relaxing.”
I understood what he meant. Being a passenger was very different from voyaging as a crew member, swabbing the decks, polishing brasses, doing anything that needed done, in no matter what weather.
“And the train from Quebec City?” Gordon said. “Was it comfortable?”
I told him how much I’d enjoyed the cleanliness and the spacious compartments. It had been worlds away from those little jungle trains crowded with people carrying babies or chickens or even pigs for the market, with the claustrophobic jungle on either side of the tracks and the glassless windows that allowed in insects as well as engine smoke.
Gordon Smith knew those experiences well, and smiled his agreement.
“And now, what about Camberloo?” he said. “What’s your first impression?”
I was honest in my answer. I mentioned the two people on the street who seemed to be leashed together and the boys playing with the dead bird. Then that I’d misperceived the wheelbarrow in the hotel mural, which had made me wonder if perhaps the lingering effects of my fever had distorted my grasp of things. I couldn’t even be sure now if the little man with the nose cone actually existed.
“Oh, he exists all right,” Gordon said. “The rumour is he lost his nose because of syphilis. But your general confusion is quite natural. You’ve been through a lot and it’ll take time for you to be completely at ease. That’s what you’re here for.”
OFTEN THROUGHOUT this conversation he’d been glancing towards a doorway to his right. Now his eyes lit up as we heard the tapping of high heels on polished wood, followed by the entrance of a young woman in a blue silk dress.
Gordon Smith stood up and so did I.
“I’d like you to meet my daughter, Alicia,” he said.
The young woman held out her hand and shook mine lightly.
“How nice to meet you,” she said in a soft voice. Her eyes were dark brown, not blue like her father’s. But they were just as unflinching, looking me over quite frankly, the way you’d appraise a photograph.
For my own part, I was certainly appraising her, though I was trying not to make that too obvious. She was of middling height, with an oval face. She was carefully made up, with black mascara framing those brown eyes. Her hair was dark brown, too, and striking in the way it hung over the left side of her face, like a veil. The more I looked at her, the harder it was to spot her father in her aside from that quality of her eyes. She was one of those children whose physical resemblance to a parent isn’t all that obvious even when you see the two of them together.
I was about to make some such remark to Gordon when I saw he’d been watching me closely, as though anxious about my impression of his daughter.
I suddenly understood.
From perhaps the time of our very first meeting at the La Mancha mine, Gordon Smith had been assessing me not just as a potential employee, but as a possible husband for his only daughter.
I BEGAN, THEREFORE, to look quite differently at this Alicia Smith, who, after pouring herself a glass of wine at the cabinet, came and sat down on the couch opposite and made polite conversation.
I guessed she’d heard all about me. I, on the other hand, didn’t know much about her. Had she lived in Camberloo all her life, for example?