Red flowers drooped at the end of long stalks, then dropped revealing the fruit in infant impotence. Week by week the fruit grew larger, pointed outward, then upward, and was cut in the full erectile vigor of youth.
Then it was over, early that year; and the minute the wet season was done it was forgotten. Near the horizon the haze appeared and the sun, part in and part out, rose warped out of shape like a drunken memory of sunrise. Black ashes hung over the plantation houses from a fire some distance away. Next door, from a radio, Enesco's Third Rumanian Rhapsody was being played on a harmonica. Otto counted his money.
The months of waiting were over, the months of non-entity. Saint Paul would have us redeem time; but if present and past are both present in time future, and that future contained in time past, there is no redemption but one. This one Otto now pressed with his wrist to be certain that it had not disappeared while he was dressing, leisurely, like a tired Colonial on the stage of a West End theater, for he had returned his wallet to his inside breast pocket. The man with the kewpie doll tattooed on the inside of his forearm (signed up for two years) said, — Two years isn't long, not if you say it real fast. For those nomads who sold the time of their lives, time was either money being made or money being spent, and life a cycle of living and unliving, as the sailor's life loses the beginning, middle, and end of the voyage from port to destination and becomes repetition of sea and ashore, of slumber and violence. The hours of work were hours of vacant existence, but the minutes were pennies, and in each dollar was held captive the hour gone for it: here time was held in thrall, to be spent at a man's wish. So as misers keep years bound up in mattresses and old tin boxes, wrapped in newspaper, sewn into linings (and ashore they sing — What shall we do with a drunken sailor?), he came forth with months in his pocket, and himself to dictate their expenditure.
— I wouldn't reach up my ass for the whole city of New York, said the man with the kewpie doll tattooed on his forearm, who stood before a mirror in the communal lavatory eating cold chili out of a can. He ate before the mirror so that he could see where his mouth was, for he had been drinking for three days. He was not working because of the burn on his back, which he said he had got when someone took a chicken out of a boiling pot and threw it at him, in a brothel down in the port. The wound on his back was not the shape of a chicken. It had been painted with a purple solution, a great island the shape of Australia the first day, now contracted to the proportions of New Zealand, the stroke of Tasmania out to sea for the doctor's hand was not a steady one.
— That's where I live, Otto said. He enjoyed coming into this lavatory, because the mirrors all in a row over the wash basins gave the pleasant illusion of passing one's self at many windows. — That sounds like quite a revolution they're having, Otto said washing his hands at the next basin.
— Them bastids don't know how to have a revolution, said the other, turning with such Anglo-Saxon indignance that the orange chili ran down his chin. — You know what I'd do if I was up there. All you got to do is get them dumb cops on their motorcycles, and string a good piece of piano wire across the road, then get down at the end of the road and take a couple of shots at them. They come after you on their motorcycles and zing zing zing there go their heads just like that. All you need, a good piece of piano wire. They don't know how to have a revolution. They're afraid somebody'll get killed. If I was up there.
— I've got to go pack, Otto said. — Have you seen Jesse?
— What do you want to see that dumb son of a bitch for?
— I'm leaving. I just wanted to tell him goodbye.
— You goin somewhere?
— New York. I told you. I'm going home.
— New York! What do you want to go there for? I wouldn't reach. But he was busy eating.
Otto had suddenly remembered his manuscript, the manuscript of his play. He was certain he had not packed it, for he had kept it out to look at until the minute before departure. It was nowhere in his room. All he found was a newspaper, in which he had been looking up sailings from nearby ports (knowing all the time that he would take the Company boat), found only a want ad for a male Chihuahua sought for breeding purposes. This paper he threw across the room, and with a cigarette in his fist like a smoking weapon he strode out, down the porch toward the shanty where the cleaning women settled about this time of day.
— Quién limpian mi cuarto mañana? he asked when he arrived, getting out in one breath the question it had taken him the distance of his walk to phrase in mistranslation.
An ancient timid hand went up among the women. — Yo, answered its owner, letting it drop. One by one they got to their feet before him.
— Hay visto una manuscripta aquí? Otto had made up the word manuscripta. One of the triumphs of his stay was his successful evasion' of learning more than some thirty mispronounced words of the language.
— Qué dijo?
— La manuscripta de mi playa, said Otto forcefully. He knew that by adding a he could translate any English noun satisfactorily. The ladies were vastly confused. He turned from the doorway and set off toward his building. They followed.
— Qué dijo de playa? asked one, drawn on by the mystery of a man looking for a beach. None tried to answer her. They tramped up the dirt in silence. Inside his room Otto turned on the woman who had admitted to cleaning it. — El está para la máquina, he said pointing to the typewriter. — Esta mañana.
— Perdido, said one woman, satisfied that something was lost.
— Si, perdido, said another equally agreeable. She started to look under the mattress.
— Qué cosa? asked the accused bravely.
— Papel, said the master. — Papel que yo escribo mi playa al máquina, finishing in triumphal confusion. — Mi playa, he repeated, menacing.
— Es muy misterioso, said one of the women.
— Si.
— Muy misterioso, repeated the third, while the fourth let go the mattress (it was where she would have hidden anything) and stood silently marveling at this man who had lost a beach right here in the room.
— Titulito The Vanity of Time, Otto recommenced.
— No entiendo, the eldest came back at him, helplessly defiant.
— The Vanity of Time, he said more loudly. — La Vanidad del
Tiemplo, God damn it, he almost shouted. Illiterate, illiterate old fools. He looked around for a pencil, found none, returned. — Tiene una. una. He made scribbling motions in the air. — For escribo.
One held a pencil out to him. — Un lápiz, señor? she asked. Lápiz, of course; though anyone looking at it could see that it was a pencil. He took it from her and wrote, THE VANITY OF TIME, in large letters. — Mucho papel, he said.
— Aïe. said the old one, dawning. — Pero si, si señor, with happy relief. She was uncomfortably familiar with this pile of paper. It had once been pointed out to her as mucho importante, and she had daily dusted the title page with care: the words were as unforgettably meaningless to her as the Latin legend circumscribing the largest local Virgin, — Aquí está, she said reaching to the top of a pile of linen on a shelf. — Lo pusé aquí cuando empacaba, todo estaba tan revuelto que tuve miedo de que se perdiera, o se ensuciara. she got out, in what sounded like one wildly relieved word.
Otto, breathing heavily, took it from her muttering, — Gracias, gracias, señoritas, without raising his eyes from the precious bundle. The four smiled, murmured — Nada, de nada, señor, and trundled out the door clustering about the acquitted for an explanation.