He sat in a wicker chair with his feet up on the extension that pulled out from under the seat and looked at the pictures on the wall of his bedroom. At the head of the bed, the cheap bed with the no-good mattress that had been bought as an economy because he never slept in it except in case of quarrels, there was Juan Gris’s Guitar Player. Nostalgia hecha hombre, he thought in Spanish. People did not know that you died of it. Across the room, above the bookcase, was Paul Klee’s Monument in Arbeit. He didn’t love it as he loved the Guitar Player but he loved to look at it and he remembered how corrupt it had seemed when he first bought it in Berlin. The color was as indecent as the plates in his father’s medical books that showed the different types of chancres and venereal ulcers, and how frightened of it his wife had been until she had learned to accept its corruption and only see it as a painting. He knew no more about it now than when he first saw it in Flechtheim’s Gallery in the house by the river that wonderful cold fall in Berlin when they had been so happy. But it was a good picture and he liked to look at it.
Above the other bookcase was one of Masson’s forests. This was Ville d’Avray and he loved it the way he loved the Guitar Player. That was the great thing about pictures; you could love them with no hopelessness at all. You could love them without sorrow and the good ones made you happy because they had done what you always tried to do. So it was done and it was all right, even if you failed to do it.
Boise came into the room and jumped up onto his lap. He jumped beautifully and could leap, without effort showing, to the top of the high chest of drawers in the big bedroom. Now, having leaped moderately and neatly, he settled down on Thomas Hudson’s lap and made loving pushes with his forepaws.
“I’m looking at the pictures, Boy. You’d be better off if you liked pictures.”
Who knows though but he may get as much from leaping and from night hunting as I get from the pictures, Thomas Hudson thought. It is a damned shame he can’t see them though. You can’t tell. He might have frightful taste in pictures.
“I wonder who you’d like, Boy. Probably the Dutch period when they painted such wonderful still lifes of fish and oysters and game. Hey, lay off me there. This is the day time. You’re not supposed to do that sort of thing in the day time.”
Boise continued with his lovemaking and Thomas Hudson pushed him onto his side to quiet him.
“You have to observe a few decencies, Boy,” he said. “I haven’t even gone out to see the other cats, to please you.”
Boise was happy and Thomas Hudson felt the purr in his throat with his fingers.
“I have to bathe, Boy. You spend half your time doing that. But you do it with your own tongue. That’s when you won’t pay any attention to me. When you wash yourself you’re just like a damned businessman at his office. That’s business. That’s not to be interrupted. Well, I have to bathe now. But instead I sit here drinking in the morning like a damned rummy. That’s one of the differences between us. You couldn’t steer eighteen hours either. I can, though. Twelve anytime. Eighteen when I have to. Nineteen yesterday and this morning. But I can’t jump and I can’t hunt at night like you. We do some pretty damn fancy hunting at night though. But you’ve got your radar in your whiskers. And a pigeon probably has his Huff Duff in that incrustation above his beak. Anyway, all homing pigeons have the incrustation. What sort of ultra-high frequencies have you got, Boy?”
Boise lay there heavy and solid and long, purring silently and very happy.
“What does your search receiver say, Boy? What’s your pulse width? What’s your pulse repetition frequency? I’ve got a magnetron built in. But don’t tell anybody. But with the consequent higher resolution attained by the UHF, enemy whores can be detected at a greater distance. It’s microwave, Boy, and you’re purring it right now.”
So that’s how you kept your resolution not to think about it until we get going again. It wasn’t the sea you wanted to forget. You know you love the sea and would not be anywhere else. Go on out to the porch and look at her. She is not cruel or callous nor any of that Quatsch. She is just there and the wind moves her and the current moves her and they fight on her surface but down below none of it matters. Be thankful that you are going out on her again and thank her for being your home. She is your home. Don’t talk nor think nonsense about her. She is not your trouble. You’re making a little more sense, he told himself. Although you don’t make too damned much ashore. All right, he told himself. I have to make so much sense at sea that I don’t want to make any ashore.
Ashore is a lovely place, he thought. Today we would see just how lovely it could be. After I see the goddamned Colonel, he thought. Well I always enjoy seeing him because it builds up my morale. Let’s not go into the Colonel, he thought. That’s one of those things we are going to skip while we have a lovely day. I will go to see him. But I won’t go into him. Enough has gone into him already that will never get out. And enough has gone out of him that they will never get back in. So I thought you weren’t going to go into him. I’m not. I’m just going in to see him and report.
He finished the drink, lifted the cat off his lap, stood up and looked at the three paintings, and then went in and took a shower. The water heater had only been on since the boys came in the morning and there was not much hot water. But he soaped himself clean, scrubbed his head, and finished off with cold water. He dressed in white flannel shirt, dark tie, flannel slacks, wool socks and his ten-year-old English brogues, a cashmere pullover sweater, and an old tweed jacket. He rang for Mario.
“Is Pedro here?”
“Yes, señor. He has the car outside.”
“Make me a Tom Collins with coconut water and bitters to take. Put it in one of the cork holders.”
“Yes, señor. Don’t you want a coat?”
“I’ll take a coat to wear back if it gets cold.”
“Will you be back for lunch?”
“No. Nor for dinner.”
“Do you want to see any of the cats before you go? They are all out in the lee of the wind in the sun.”
“No. I will see them tonight. I want to bring them a present.”
“I go to make the drink. It will take a moment for the coconut.”
Now why in hell wouldn’t you go to see the cats? he asked himself. I don’t know, he answered. That one I did not understand at all. That was a new one.
Boise was following him, a little worried at this going away, but not panicky since there was no baggage and no packing. “Maybe I did it for you, Boy,” Thomas Hudson said. “Don’t you worry. I’ll be back sometime tonight or in the morning. With my ashes dragged, I hope. Properly, I hope. Then maybe we will make a little better sense around here. Vámonos a limpiar la escopeta.”
He came out of the long, bright living room that still seemed enormous and down the stone steps into the even greater brightness of the Cuban winter morning. The dogs played around his legs and the sad pointer came up grovelling and wagging his lowered head.
“You poor miserable beast,” he said to the pointer. He patted him and the dog fawned on him. The other mongrel dogs were gay and prancing in the excitement of the cold and the wind. There were some dead branches broken off the ceiba tree that grew out of the patio and they lay on the steps where they had fallen in the wind. The chauffeur came from behind the car, shivering exaggeratedly, and said, “Good morning, Mr. Hudson. How was the voyage?”
“Good enough. How are the Cars?”