The couple came so close to Mal’s table, the stocky man holding the slightly taller woman at arm’s length, that Mal became aware of the musky perfume she wore. The dress was fitted closely around the slim waist and the hips. The man’s brown hand rested on the concavity of the waist just above the full swell of the left hip.
Mal watched them and then suddenly as they turned, he noticed their expressions. The girl wore a pronounced look of fear and distaste that came and went so quickly that he wondered if he imagined it. She held the upper part of her body rigid, but from the waist down her hips and thighs moved with the pronounced rumba rhythm.
The older man’s expression did not change. He had to look up a bit to look into her face. He wore a crisp gray line of mustache. He seemed to be laughing at her, and there was no mistaking the fact that it was a laugh of contempt.
He turned her so that she looked across his shoulder and, for a moment, into Mal’s eyes. She held his gaze for a second or two before she looked away. Soon the set ended and they went back to their table. His interest aroused, Mal looked more carefully at the others. The other woman was of an age, possibly a year younger than the taller girl. She had that disconcerting vividness that is so animal in content that the impact is like a blow. Black sleek hair, bold eyes, a slash of a red mouth, a face and body continually in motion, in flux. When she stood up to dance Mal saw that in spite of her look of plumpness, of a bit too much breadth of hip and depth of breast, her waist was extraordinarily slim. She was very light on her feet, very quick, and she laughed endlessly up into the face of one of the two younger men.
It is a lonely game in a public place to attempt to sort out the lives of strangers. The two younger men seemed to be of the same type. Tall, thick-shouldered, with the pale eyes, unreadable expressions and heavy mouths that tell unmistakably of a streak of brutality. Professional soldiers have that look.
The plump girl seemed to be spreading her attention equally between the two. When the bald-head spoke, the other four listened attentively. The five acted as though they were well accustomed to being with each other. They had found their pattern. The tall girl did not speak at all while at the table. The black-haired girl chattered on with no one paying any particular attention.
At eleven o’clock he felt his head grow heavy and his eyelids sag. He could no longer maintain his interest in the group at the other table. He went gratefully up to his room and slept until dawn.
The breeze that came in at the wide window with its deep sills was almost fresh. He put on a pair of clean shorts and sat on the sill, his back to the frame, and watched the grayness over the city slowly lighten. Two stories below beggars slept on the sidewalk wrapped in the grayish cotton which, during the day, would form their turbans. Sleepy hotel employees came out and screwed a section of fire hose to the polished brass outlet in the side of the hotel. The hose stiffened as the stream of water pulsed through it. They turned the hose on the sleeping beggars, who jumped to their feet, screamed curses and fled, wringing out the strips of cotton.
The long sleep had somehow made the flight from China seem like a dream. He remembered the old man who died on the plane, the way they had pulled the body back, stripped it, pushed it out to spin down to the green jungle floor of Burma far below. That, too, seemed like something he had read rather than seen.
He smoked and watched the city and wondered what he would do with his life. This was a time of taking inventory. He could not quite imagine going back to the glib, smart-aleck reporting that had been so satisfying before China.
After a leisurely breakfast he went to the river docks. It took him three hours in the heat and confusion, next to the stink of the river, to find what he wanted. It was Swedish registry, with an Irish first officer named Dolan. Dolan sported a long, wide, bristly beard the color of midnight flame.
“If it’s no hurry you’re in, lad, she may be your craft. How good a sailor are ye?”
Mal grinned. “Always sick the first day out. After that I’m okay.”
“The Bjornsan Star, lad, could work up a vicious pitch and roll in drydock, I do believe. But she’s a clean ship. You’ll find the grub good, but not fancy.”
“What did you say the ports of call will be?”
“After we get down this stinking river, we go to Colombo, then Perth, Melbourne, Wellington, Pago Pago, Honolulu and Port of Los Angeles. You’ll get a few days ashore each place, I should say.”
“I'm not after the sightseeing. I need a long rest.”
“And if ye’ll forgive me sayin’ it, you look as though you could use it, lad. There’s a good cabin empty. We’re running with a short crew this trip. No third officer, so I’ll have the second move into the third’s bunk and you can take the second’s cabin.”
“I don’t want to inconvenience anybody.”
Dolan leaned forward and there was a grin behind his beard. “Truth is, the Bjornsan Line is so hungry for a bit of passage money, you could have the old man’s cabin if he hadn’t already given it up. So go get your papers in order and I’ll have the passage agreement ready for you by the time you get back. Your hotel is probably cooler than this dutch oven, so say you come aboard at nine tonight. We go downriver on the tide change at ten-fifteen.”
At a few minutes before nine the Sikh taximan deposited Mal and his two heavy bags on the dock at the foot of the Bjornsan Star’s gangplank. Dolan was leaning on the rail overhead smoking a pipe. He waved at Mal, turned and roared a command in what could have been Swedish. Two blond sailors trotted down, grinned at Mal, shouldered the bags and went aboard, beckoning to him to follow them.
“Welcome aboard, lad,” Dolan said. “Follow the boys to your cabin and lock your stuff inside. Thieves have a nasty habit of sneaking aboard here. Then come on back topside and talk a while.”
The Bjornsan Star was a nondescript freighter of unknown breed. She sighed gently against the dock like a troubled old lady who dreaded the weary miles ahead. Below decks she smelled of fresh paint and oil. The companionway was spotlessly clean, freshly painted, but as hot as an oven.
By the time Mal got back out into the open air with the cabin key in his pocket, his clothes were sticking to him.
He went up to Dolan. “That’s a nice cabin.”
“You’ll find it comfortable, Mr. Atkinson. Ye have another name, I suppose. Call me Bob.”
“My name’s Mal, Bob.” They shook hands.
“What’s your trade, Mal?”
“Reporter. I’ve just come out of China.”
“A bloody horrible mess that must be. When I get some time I want you to tell me about it.”
A cargo floodlight affixed to the skeleton of what had been the wartime radar setup clicked on with blinding whiteness. Dolan sighed. “Now the old man’s getting anxious. Here he comes. Doesn’t speak a word of English.”
The captain walked around a hatch cover and came over to Dolan. He gave Atkinson an incurious glance. He was a wispy, dry-looking man with a hollow chest, blond hair gone gray, faded blue eyes and a suit of rumpled, food-spotted whites.
Dolan said something in which Mal heard the sound of his own name. The captain gave a curt, continental bow in Mal's direction. Dolan said, “This is Captain Paulus.”
Paulus pulled out a large old gold watch, said something in an irritable tone to Dolan, waved the watch face in front of Dolan’s eyes and stalked away. Dolan turned and spat down onto the dock, then in an oddly husky tone said, “An old fool who can’t pilot a rowboat in a mill pond. But his record’s spotless. Never lost a ship in forty-three years. Some have the luck and some don’t.”