Then he spoke again. His face was drawn and strained. He said, “I used to go to Lisbon sometimes. It was a nice place to be in. Dangerous, full of agents, full of South Africans. But it was out of Africa. I used to go to the bullfights. They told me that in the Portuguese bullfight they didn’t kill the bull. I believed them. I went a lot. And then I heard that the bulls were killed afterwards, after the fight. There was nothing else you could do with them. I’d somehow believed that the spears or barbs would just be taken out and the wounds would heal. Oh my God, why is any of us allowed to live at all? That’s the miracle, the sheer charity of man to man.”
He was alarming her. But he didn’t notice.
“When I eat food and enjoy it, I wonder why I am allowed to do so. When I lie down in my bed at night and make myself comfortable, I wonder why I am allowed to do so. It would be so easy to take it away from me. Every night I think about that. It would be so easy to torment me. Once you tie a man’s hands you can do anything to him.”
Jane said, “This is too morbid. I don’t want to hear any more. No one’s going to do anything to you here, and you know it.”
It wasn’t what he had been expecting. He had been half hoping for the comfort, the mood of the earlier part of the evening, the glimpse of the other side of her.
When she left the table, he remained in the kitchen; he heard Adela’s radio, turned low. Then he went out to the porch. It was cold, but he sat on one of the metal chairs, listening to the roar, the reggae beat, of the city down below.
Later, after he had closed up, brushed his teeth, and changed into his pajamas, he went to Jane’s room. Her door, as always when she had closed the redwood louvers for the night, had been left ajar, for the air. He went in without knocking.
She was in bed, reading a paperback of The Woodlanders, no sheet over her, and she seemed very big in a plain white cotton nightdress. Her arms were exposed; he could see her breasts. He sat at the end of the bed. A door of the fitted wardrobe was open: he could see signs that she had been packing. She hadn’t brought many clothes. He looked at the wardrobe clutter, and she continued to read. It was how, in spite of everything, they still occasionally came together: sex as physical comfort and mutual service, changing nothing.
He said, in a tone that was consciously calm, as though he was listening to himself, “You know, what happened today reminded me of something that happened in London. You’ve probably forgotten. Perhaps you didn’t even take it in at the time. You weren’t the keenest of publicity managers.”
She looked up from her book.
He said, smiling, “You sent a man to see me. You gave him my address and he came to see me. Oh, you telephoned me about it. You said he wanted to do a profile or an interview.”
“There were so many people like that.”
“Not for my book. Well, he came. I was very pleased to be interviewed. It was like being a writer, you know. Well, he came. He was an enormous man. He was wearing a black leather jacket and rimless glasses. A really enormous man. He was wearing three-quarter-length boots. Swinging London. Gear, you call it, don’t you? I remember the boots — pretend-cowboy, pretend-Nazi. He was very polite. He knew a lot. He was very well informed. Then something strange happened, and it happened very quickly. So quickly I couldn’t even work out in my own mind how it happened. From being someone who was asking me for my views, he became someone who was giving me his views. And those boots began to change their character. It wasn’t swinging London and pretend-Nazi. It was the real thing. The accent changed too. And my room changed character too. I was pleased to have a reporter in it — it seemed the kind of thing an interviewer or reporter would find of interest. But then it became another kind of room. This man had a message for me. If I didn’t shut up or, better, get out of England, I was going to be killed. He used the word. He rather enjoyed using the word.”
“But that was London. You could have told the publisher. There were all kinds of things you could have done.”
“Your England is different from mine. This man was very big. I keep on talking about his size. It isn’t only because I’m small. You know I’m not afraid of people. I’ve a good idea of what the odds are in any given situation, and I can be cautious. But I’m not afraid. It’s the way I am. It probably has to do with the school I went to. I suppose if you accept authority and believe in the rules, you aren’t afraid of any particular individual. But I was afraid of this man. I could see that he was enjoying himself, acting out the role a little. People in that kind of situation always put on a little style. Perhaps it was a hoax. But I didn’t think so. I took him seriously. I believed what he said.”
“Was that why you came here?”
Roche smiled. “It was a powerful incentive.”
“You didn’t come to do the job you told me you wanted to do? I thought that was why you left in such a rush.”
“Oh yes, the job. You had your own ideas of the job I was coming out to do. Meredith wanted to know about the job too.”
“But he’s right to want to know. You talked about working with what there is. So there is something in what they say about you here. You are a refugee.”
“The job offered itself. And it seemed the kind of thing I could do.”
“And now you’ll just leave Jimmy out there for those people to kill. Who’s going to give him a job? So Jimmy’s right. You’ve all turned him into a ‘playboy.’ A plaything. And now you’re throwing him to Meredith.”
“It’s what Jimmy’s turned himself into.”
“Well, I’ve news for you. I’ve news for both of you. He’s been my lover.”
The book had been resting on her breasts. She took it up again. Her face was as flushed as her arms.
Roche turned to face her. He said, “I don’t believe you’re lying.”
“Why should I lie to you?”
He stood up. “But I don’t think it would be news to Meredith.”
He went out of the room, closing the door behind him, remembering too late that she left it ajar, for the air.
Some time later he went and opened the door. She was still reading. He stood in the doorway. She looked and saw the satyr’s face.
He said, “Has he taken a picture of you naked? Did you pose for him with your legs open?”
A half-smile, of puzzlement and nervousness, settled on her face.
He said, “Isn’t that what they do with the women they’ve degraded? Keep them in their wallet to show the others? Or did he do the other thing? The other act of contempt.”
She didn’t reply. He left the door ajar and went back to his room.
15
HELLO MARJORIE, Well this will be a surprise to you I bet, I can see you holding this between your slender well-manicured fingers, you wouldn’t believe you use toilet paper and do other things (joke) and snorting, Is it Jimmy, what does he want this time, he’s had all he’s going to get from me. That is my Marge these days I know, different from the old days, older and wiser as you say, but I understand all that, sweetheart, and I don’t want anger to come between us anymore.
Sweetheart, I sit in the peace and stillness of this tropical night to pen these words to you, because I want to clear my heart, you are the only person I can write to, and I want you to know that you were right, what you prophesied is all coming true, I am dying alone and unloved and I will die in anger, no other way is possible now. That is a bad way to die, and Marjorie I feel death is close to me tonight, I can hear it in the tropical stillness, fitfully broken by the occasional hoot of an owl, and to tell you the truth sweetheart I feel relieved, I feel I should go now. When we were children and you heard an owl at night you stuck pins in the wick of the lamp to keep death away from the house, but I don’t think it stopped the coffins coming.