It had an awning over it, so those in it couldn’t be seen from overhead until they had emerged. He shifted farther over, to a position directly above the foot of the Jacob’s ladder, and looked down on their heads as they bobbed into sight one by one.
There weren’t very many of them. And she wasn’t with them, she hadn’t come back.
He hovered there on the outskirts of the little group as they stood on the deck. Some woman greeted him, and he instantly asked her the question that was really needless, since he could see the answer for himself. “Didn’t my wife come back with you?”
“No, she wasn’t with us.”
He found himself immensely relieved for a moment. “Somebody claimed they’d seen her going ashore. I didn’t think she—”
She promptly gave the report devastating confirmation. “She was. I caught sight of her myself, some distance off, in the town, when we were being led about by the nose. There was no sign of her when we gathered to get back in the tender again, so we thought maybe she’d come back ahead of us in that same little boat she hired.” Then, noting the strain in his face, “Hasn’t she?”
“No.”
“You’d better go back after her yourself! She may have been left stranded on the—”
He didn’t need to be told that by now. He was already at the ladder head, roaring down in advance of his own floundering descent, “Wait a minute, hold that thing! I’m coming with you. My wife’s still ashore.”
“We’re sailing in three quarters of an hour, Mr. Jones! Don’t stay too long!” one of the officers called overside to him as the tender nosed along the heat-blistered hull and then veered off landward.
Jones subsided uneasily into the pit of the boat. The heat was unbearable down this close to the water; it was like cutting through boiling tar. He instinctively withdrew his hand to avoid touching it, as if afraid of being scalded, though that was only a sensory illusion.
The age-old verdigris-coated stone quay slowly reared itself above the water line before them. Jones jumped out and ran up the slimy slabs that formed the stairs, his foot skidding from the Up of one and striking the one below in momentary misstep that failed to slow or throw him down save for a momentary lurch.
She wasn’t in sight anywhere. There was no sign of her. He turned to one of the idlers lounging about. “Señora.” he said, dredging up one of the few Spanish words he knew.
The fellow pointed out to the ship and said something that probably meant, “They all went back a few minutes ago.”
“Not the one I mean,” Jones muttered. He didn’t loiter there bothering to translate it, but struck off the landing stage and into the town proper without wasting any more time.
One of the sailors called out some warning about returning in time, but he paid no heed. His mind was intent on one thing and one alone: on finding her.
Now that he was in the midst of it the place had condensed itself still further, so that it looked even smaller than when seen from the ship out in the roadstead. A main street of sorts ran up straight before him from the quayside plaza. A few lesser ones crossed it at uneven intervals, like misplaced ties on a railroad track. And that, seemingly, was the whole sum and substance of it. It seemed unbelievable that anyone could lose himself in a place such as this for any length of time; that is, fail to find a way back to the starting point. But then — where was she, what had become of her?
He chose this spinal thoroughfare first, up one side, down the other, trying the interiors of the handful of shops that might have attracted her. She was in none of them, she had been seen in none of them. Everywhere heads shook, hands widened.
He returned to the quay again, still without her. One of the sailors from the tender again shouted a warning to him, pointed out to the ship. There wasn’t much time. It spurred him to an added frenzy of distracted searching.
He ran into one of the side streets. Cheap little drink shops, tawdry booths, all the effluvia of tropical barter. She wouldn’t be in any of these. What was there here for her? For that matter, what was there for her in this entire place? He turned, went back again.
He was good and frightened now, and in a deplorable state of breathlessness, dishevelment, and cumulative perspiration brought on by his own efforts.
He discovered a hotel of sorts, probably the only one the place boasted, but again all he got were shrugs and splayed hands.
He even looked inside a crumbling pink-sandstone church he came across, glossy-coated buzzards nestling along its peristyle and cornices like lacquered sentinels of corruption. The cavernous place was empty. Candle flames fluttered with the disturbance of his entrance, in a serried line ascending one side of the altar, descending again on the other; first all leaning over one way, then bending back again to lean the other, before they righted themselves again.
He took off his hat, withdrew backward, less cyclonically than he had entered, dropping a coin into the alms box for amends as he turned and went out.
Outside, he tottered down the steps again, palm flat to his forehead in a sort of salute to bewilderment. Where, then? Where else? Where was there left? He’d been all over the confounded little place.
There must be a police station of some sort, even in this benighted little backwater. That was it. He’d have to go there for help.
And then, well on his way to it, and already almost there, the need for it was suddenly done away with.
She was in a shop of sorts, scarcely a shop, a booth set back into the walls like a niche. The white of her dress gleamed out palely from the dimness of its interior. She was standing motionless, her back to the roadway outside.
His sudden appearance at the single-file entrance darkened over the little light there was, blotting out the interior for a moment.
“Mitty!” he exclaimed hoarsely.
She seemed not to hear him, she was so absorbed.
He stepped quickly over to her and took her by the arm. “Mitty are you crazy? I’ve been frightened half out of my skin! I’ve been hunting everywhere for you, all up and down this town!”
She turned to him as though she didn’t know him for a minute.
Then, as though his presence had finally registered, she exclaimed belatedly, but with perfect composure, “Oh, it’s you, Larry! How did you get here?”
“Mitty, d’you know what I’ve been through?”
“Have I been in here very long?” she asked vaguely. “I’ve been trying to remember something.”
She turned and followed him docilely enough out into the open once more. The shopkeeper trailed behind her, saying something in tactful insistence. Jones turned in time to see her give him back one of the curios, a grotesque little clay figurine of a squatting human form, arms laced about its knees, head disproportionately large, which she had unknowingly retained in her hand.
“What possessed you?” Jones was saying disjointedly, as they struck back in the direction he’d just come from.
She looked behind her; whether at the shop itself, or the shopkeeper standing there in its opening looking after them, or at the little clay figure, he couldn’t be sure.
“I was roaming around, I happened to pass by there, and I looked in. I caught sight of those things on the shelf, those rows of little stone figures he had, and I don’t know — every time I picked one up, I got the funniest feeling, I couldn’t seem to tear myself a—”
He had no time to hear her out. Some blurred remark in postscript swept glancingly past his attention. “It’s like when you open an old trunk, and see things that you haven’t seen in a long time, and try to remember where and when you—”
“We’re going to lose that ship if we don’t hurry.” He began to beckon violently.
A little hooded carriage turned, toiled laboriously up to them — the street was on a sharp incline — turned once more, and drew up. Jones helped her in.