“You know what the telephone service is like in this city.”
“When a telephone is out of order one usually hears an engaged tone, not a ringing tone.”
“Not always, colonel. Anyway it may have been the ringing tone. I did not listen very carefully.”
“And yet you came all the way out to the camp?”
“It was about time anyway that I visited Seńora Fortnum. Why should I lie to you?”
“I have to think of all the possibilities, doctor. Even a crime of passion is possible.”
“Passion?” the doctor smiled. “I am an Englishman.”
“Yes, it is unlikely-I know that. And in the case of Seńora Fortnum… one would not suppose a man like you with all your chances would find it necessary… yet I have known crimes of passion even in a brothel.”
“Charley Fortnum is a friend of mine.”
“Oh, a friend… It is usually a friend one betrays, isn’t it, in these cases?” Colonel Perez put a hand on the doctor’s shoulder. “You must forgive me. I know you well enough, doctor, to allow myself a little speculation when I feel myself at a loss. As I do now. I have heard it said your relations with Seńora Fortnum have been very close. All the same-I agree-I would not have thought they would require the elimination of her husband. And yet I still keep wondering why you lied to me.”
He climbed into the car. His revolver holster creaked as he eased-himself down in his seat. He leaned back to make sure that the avocado was not in a position where it would bounce and bruise.
Doctor Plarr said, “I was not thinking, colonel, when I spoke, that was all. Lying to the police is almost an automatic reflex. And I was unaware you knew so much about me.”
“This is a small city,” Colonel Perez said. “It is always safer to assume common knowledge when you sleep with a married woman.”
Doctor Plarr watched the police car out of sight and then went reluctantly back into the house. Secrecy, he thought, is part of the attraction in a sexual affair. An open affair has always a touch of absurdity.
Clara sat exactly where he had left her. He thought: this is the first time we have been together with no sense of hurry, no rendezvous for her to keep at the Consulate, no fear that Charley will return accidentally from farming. She asked, “Do you think he is dead?”
“No.”
“Perhaps it would be good for everybody if he were.”
“Not for Charley.”
“Yes. Even for Charley. He is so afraid,” she said, “of getting old.”
“All the same I don’t suppose he wants to die just yet.”
“The baby was kicking hard this morning.”
“Yes?”
“Do you want to go to the bedroom?”
“Of course.” He waited for her to get up and lead the way.
They never kissed on the mouth (that was part of the brothel training), and he followed her with a slow renewal of excitement. In a real love affair, he thought, you are interested in a woman because she is someone distinct from yourself; then bit by bit she adapts herself to you, she picks up your habits, your ideas, even your turns of phrase, she becomes part of you, and then what interest remains? One cannot love oneself, one cannot live for long close to oneself-everyone has need of a stranger in the bed, and a whore remains a stranger. Her body has been scrawled over by so many men you can never decipher your own signature there.
When they were quiet and her head was lying against his shoulder in the same attitude taken by a peaceful lover, she began a sentence which he mistook for one he had too often heard, “Eduardo, is it true? Do you really…?”
“No,” he said firmly.
He thought she was demanding the same answer to a banal question that his mother had constantly forced out of him after they left his father, the answer which each of his mistresses sooner or later had always Insisted on-“Do you really love me, Eduardo?” One merit of a brothel is that the word love is seldom if ever employed. He repeated, “No.”
“How can you be sure?” she asked. “Just now you sounded so certain he was alive, but even that policeman thinks he is dead.”
Doctor Plarr realized he had been mistaken and in his relief he kissed her close to the mouth.
The news came over the radio from the local station while they were at lunch. It was the first meal they had ever taken together, and they were both of them ill at ease. Eating food side by side seemed more intimate to Doctor Plarr than the sexual act: The maid served them and disappeared between each course into the vast untidy regions of the ramshackle house, regions which he had never penetrated. First she served them an omelette, then an excellent steak which was far better than the goulash at the Italian Club or the tough beef at the Nacional. There was a bottle of Charley’s Chilean wine which had more body than the cooperative wine from Mendoza. It was odd eating so formally and so well with one of Seńora Sanchez’ girls. It opened an unexpected vista into quite another sort of life, a domestic life equally strange to both of them. It was as though he had taken a boat down one of the small tributaries of the Paraná and suddenly found himself in some great delta like that of the Amazon, where all sense of direction can be lost. He felt an unaccustomed tenderness toward Clara who had made this strange voyage possible. They picked their words carefully, it was the first time there were words to pick; they had a subject of conversation-Charley Fortnum’s disappearance.
Doctor Plarr began to speak of him as though he were, after all, certainly dead-it seemed to him safer that way, for otherwise she might begin to wonder what was the source of his hope. Only when Clara spoke of the future did he change his tack in order to evade a dubious topic. Charley, he assured her, might yet prove to be alive. To navigate in this new Amazonian waste of deeps and shoals proved difficult-it made for a confusion of tenses. “It’s quite possible he escaped from the car, and then if he was exhausted he might have been carried a long way by the current… He may have landed far from any village…”
“But why was his car in the river there?” She added with regret, “It was the new Cadillac. He was going to sell it next week in Buenos Aires.”
“Perhaps he had some errand in Posadas. He was a man who might well…”
“Oh no, I know he was not going to Posadas. He was coming to see me. He did not want to go to those ruins. He did not even want to go to the Governor’s dinner. He was anxious about me and the baby.”
“Why? He had no reason. You are a strong girl, Clara.”
“I pretended sometimes to be sick so he would ask you to come and see me. It was easier for you that way.”
“What a little bitch you are,” he exclaimed with pleasure.
“And he took my best sunglasses, the ones you gave me. I shall never see them again now. They were my favourite sunglasses. They were so smart. And they came from Mar del Plata.”
“I will go to Gruber’s tomorrow,” he said, “and get you another pair.”
“It was the only one they had.”
“They can order another pair.”
“He borrowed them once before and nearly broke them.”
“He must have looked a bit odd in them,” Doctor Plarr said.
“He never cares what he looks like. And he saw very badly when he had been drinking.” The tenses, present and past, swung to and fro like the arrow of a barometer moving irregularly between settled and unsettled weather.
“Did he love you, Clara?” It was not a question which had ever troubled him. Charley Fortnum, as Clara’s husband, had never meant more to him than a slight inconvenience when he felt the need to have her quickly, but Charley Fortnum, lying drugged on a box in a dirty back room, took on the appearance of a serious rival.
“He was always kind to me.”
After the avocado ice had been served he felt desire for her beginning to return. He had no patients to see before the evening; he could take a siesta at the camp without keeping his ear pricked for the rumbling approach of Fortnum’s Pride. After the morning climax he would be able to prolong his pleasure through the whole afternoon. She had never, since that first occasion in his flat, attempted to play the comedy of passion, and her indifference had begun to represent a challenge. Sometimes when he was alone he dreamed of surprising her into a genuine cry of excitement.