Big Money (31 page)

 

PEACHES FLED WITH FEW CLOTHES

 

Saw a rosebud in a store

    
So I'm goin' where there's more

         
Good-bye blues

 

the three whites he has with him appear to be of primitive Nordic stock. Physically they are splendid creatures. They have fine flaxen hair, blue-green eyes and white skins. The males are covered with a downlike hair

 

Let me lay me down to sleep in Carolina

  
With a peaceful pillow 'neath my weary head

    
For a rolling stone like me there's nothing finer

       
Oh Lordy what a thrill

       
To hear that whip-poor-will

              
In Carolina

westbound      to      Havana      Puerto-Mexico      Galveston      out      of Santander (the glassy estuary the feeling of hills hemming the moist night an occasional star drips chilly out of the rainy sky a row of lights spills off the muffled shore) the twinscrews rumble

at last westbound away from pension spinsters tasty about watercolors the old men with crocodile eyes hiding their bloody claws under neat lisle gloves the landscapes corroded with literature      westbound

 

for an old man he is old

    
for an old man he is grey

but a young man's heart is full of love

    
get away old man get away

 

at the dinnertable westbound in the broadlit saloon the amplybosomed broadbeamed      la bella cubana in a yellow lowcut dress archly with the sharp rosy nail of her littlest finger points

the curlyhaired young bucks from Bilbao (louder and funnier) in such tightwaisted icecreamcolored suits silk shirts striped ties (westbound to Havana for the sugarboom) the rich one has a diamond ring      tooshiny eyes look the way her little finger jabs

 

but a young man's heart is full of love

 

she whispers      He came out of her cabin when I was on the way to the bath      Why was she giggling in number sixtysix? the rich one from Bilbao orders champagne

to echo the corks that pop in an artillery salute from the long table where the Mexican general tall solemnfaced with a black mustache and five tall solemnfaced bluejowled sons a fat majordomo and a sprinkling of blank henshaped ladies who rustle out hurriedly in black silk with their handkerchiefs to their mouths as soon as we round the cape where the lighthouse is

westbound (out of old into new inordinate new undeciphered new) southerly summertime crossing (towards events) the roar in the ears the deep blue heaving the sun hot on the back of your hand the feel of wet salt on the handrails the smell of brasspolish and highpressure steam the multitudinous flickering dazzle of light

and every noon we overeat hors d'œuvres drink too much wine while gigglingly with rolling eyes la bella to indicate who slept with who sharply jabs with littlest pinsharpened finger

la juerga

alas the young buck from Bilbao the one with the diamond ring suffers amidships (westbound the ancient furies follow in our wake) a kick from Venus's dangerous toe      retires to bed      we take our coffee in his cabin instead of the fumoir      the ladies interest themselves in his plight

two gallegos loosemouthed frognecked itinerant are invited up from the steerage to sing to the guitar (Vichy water and deep song argyrol rhymes with rusiñol)

 

si quieres qu'el carro cante

    
mójele y déjele en rio

que después de buen moja'o

    
canta com' un silbí'o

 

and funny stories a thousand and one Havana nights the dance of the millions      the fair cubanas a ellas les gustan los negros

but stepping out on deck to get a breath of briny afternoon there's more to be seen than that rusty freighter wallowing in indigo      el rubio     the buck from Bilbao who has no diamond ring beset with yelling cubans      la bella leads with heaving breast a small man with grey sideburns is pushed out at el rubio they shove at him from behind

escándalo

alternately the contestants argue with their friends who hold them back      break loose      fly at each other with threshing arms      are recaptured      pulled apart

shipsofficers intervene

pale and trembling the champions are led away he of the sideburns to the ladies' drawingroom      el rubio aft to the fumoir

there we masticate the insults      what was it all about? no señor no      el rubio grabs a sheet of the notepaper of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique but fingers refuse to hold the pen      while he twined them in his long curly hair an unauthorized observer who had become involved in the broil misspelled glibly to his dictation

a challenge

and carried it frozenfaced to the parties in the ladies' drawingroom      coño

then we walk el rubio back and forth across the palpitating stern discuss rapiers pistols fencingpractice

now only the westbound observer appears at meals      el rubio mopes at the end of the bunk of his beclapped friend and prepares for doom      the ship's agog with dueltalk until mon commandant a redfaced Breton visits all parties and explains that this kind of nonsense is expressly forbidden in the regulations of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique and that the musical gallegos must go back to the steerage from whence they sprang      despair

enter with martial tread mi general expert he says in affairs of honor un militar      coño      vamos may he try to conciliate the parties

all to the fumoir where already four champagnebottles are ranked cozily iced in their whitemetal pails      coño sandwiches are served      mi general clears up the misunderstanding something about los negros and las cubanas overheard in the cabin of the bucks from Bilbao by listening      vamos      down the ventilator      many things were that better were unsaid      but in any case honor insulated by the ventilator was intact gingerly the champions take each others hands coño palmas sombreros música      mi general is awarded the ear

in the steerage the gallegos sing and strum

el rubio at the bar confides to me      that it was from la bella of
the pink jabbing finger and the dainty ear at ventilators that he with the diamond ring received the

and that he himself has fears      coño una puta indecente

arrival in Havana      an opulentlydressed husband in a panamahat receives la bella      the young bucks from Bilbao go to the Sevilla-Biltmore and I

dance of the millions or not lackofmoney has raised its customary head inevitable as visas

in the whirl of sugarboom prices in the Augustblistering sun yours truly tours the town and the sugary nights with twenty smackers fifteen eightfifty dwindling in the jeans in search of lucrative

and how to get to Mexico

or anywhere

Margo Dowling was sixteen when she married Tony. She loved the trip down to Havana on the boat. It was very rough but she wasn't sick a minute; Tony was. He turned very yellow and lay in his bunk all the time and only groaned when she tried to make him come on deck to breathe some air. The island was in sight before she could get him into his clothes. He was so weak she had to dress him like a baby. He lay on his bunk with his eyes closed and his cheeks hollow while she buttoned his shoes for him. Then she ran up on deck to see Havana, Cuba. The sea was still rough. The waves were shooting columns of spray up the great rocks under the lighthouse. The young thinfaced third officer who'd been so nice all the trip showed her Morro Castle back of the lighthouse and the little fishingboats with tiny black or brown figures in them swinging up and down on the huge swells outside of it. The other side the pale caramelcolored houses looked as if they were standing up right out of the breakers. She asked him where Vedado was and he pointed up beyond into the haze above the surf. “That's the fine residential section,” he said. It was very sunny and the sky was full of big white clouds.

By that time they were in the calm water of the harbor passing a row of big schooners anchored against the steep hill under the sunny forts and castles, and she had to go down into the bilgy closeness of
their cabin to get Tony up and close their bags. He was still weak and kept saying his head was spinning. She had to help him down the gangplank.

The ramshackle dock was full of beadyeyed people in white and tan clothes bustling and jabbering. They all seemed to have come to meet Tony. There were old ladies in shawls and pimplylooking young men in straw hats and an old gentleman with big bushy white whiskers wearing a panamahat. Children with dark circles under their eyes got under everybody's feet. Everybody was yellow or coffee-colored and had black eyes, and there was one greyhaired old nigger-woman in a pink dress. Everybody cried and threw up their arms and hugged and kissed Tony and it was a long time before anybody noticed Margo at all. Then all the old women crowded around kissing her and staring at her and making exclamations in Spanish about her hair and her eyes and she felt awful silly not understanding a word and kept asking Tony which his mother was, but Tony had forgotten his English. When he finally pointed to a stout old lady in a shawl and said la mamá she was very much relieved it wasn't the colored one.

If this is the fine residential section, Margo said to herself when they all piled out of the streetcar, after a long ride through yammering streets of stone houses full of dust and oily smells and wagons and mulecarts, into the blisteringhot sun of a cobbled lane, I'm a milliondollar heiress.

They went through a tall doorway in a scabby peeling pinkstucco wall cut with narrow barred windows that went right down to the ground, into a cool rankishsmelling vestibule set with wicker chairs and plants. A parrot in a cage squawked and a fat piggy little white dog barked at Margo and the old lady who Tony had said was la mamá came forward and put her arm around her shoulders and said a lot of things in Spanish. Margo stood there standing first on one foot and then on the other. The doorway was crowded with the neighbors staring at her with their monkeyeyes.

“Say, Tony, you might at least tell me what she's saying,” Margo whined peevishly. “Mother says this is your house and you are welcome, things like that. Now you must say muchas gracias, mamá.” Margo couldn't say anything. A lump rose in her throat and she burst out crying.

She cried some more when she saw their room, a big dark alcove hung with torn lace curtains mostly filled up by a big iron bed with a
yellow quilt on it that was all spotted with a brown stain. She quit crying and began to giggle when she saw the big cracked chamberpot with roses on it peeping out from under.

Tony was sore. “Now you must behave very nice,” he said. “My people they say you are very pretty but not wellbred.”

“Aw, you kiss my foot,” she said.

All the time she was in Havana she lived in that alcove with only a screen in front of the glass door to the court. Tony and the boys were always out. They'd never take her anywhere. The worst of it was when she found she was going to have a baby. Day after day she lay there all alone staring up at the cracked white plaster of the ceiling, listening to the shrill jabber of the women in the court and the vestibule and the parrot and the yapping of the little white dog that was named Kiki. Roaches ran up and down the wall and ate holes in any clothes that weren't put away in chests.

Every afternoon a hot square of sunlight pressed in through the glass roof of the court and ran along the edge of the bed and across the tiled floor and made the alcove glary and stifling.

Tony's family never let her go out unless one of the old women went along, and then it was usually just to market or to church. She hated going to the market that was so filthy and rancidsmelling and jammed with sweaty jostling negroes and chinamen yelling over coops of chickens and slimy stalls of fish. La mamá and Tia Feliciana and Carná the old niggerwoman seemed to love it. Church was better, at least people wore better clothes there and the tinsel altars were often full of flowers, so she went to confession regularly, though the priest didn't understand the few Spanish words she was beginning to piece together, and she couldn't understand his replies. Anyway church was better than sitting all day in the heat and the rancid smells of the vestibule trying to talk to the old women who never did anything but fan and chatter, while the little white dog slept on a dirty cushion on a busted gilt chair and occasionally snapped at a fly.

Tony never paid any attention to her any more; she could hardly blame him her face looked so redeyed and swollen from crying. Tony was always around with a middleaged babyfaced fat man in a white suit with an enormous double gold watchchain looped across his baywindow whom everybody spoke of very respectfully as el señor Manfredo. He was a sugarbroker and was going to send Tony to Paris
to study music. Sometimes he'd come and sit in the vestibule on a wicker chair with his goldheaded cane between his fat knees. Margo always felt there was something funny about Señor Manfredo, but she was as nice to him as she could be. He paid no attention to her either. He never took his eyes off Tony's long black lashes.