Contango (Ill Wind) (19 page)

“Well, it did just enter my mind that you might be an escaped
gunman.”

“And even so, you’d have asked me in here to wait?”

“Why not?” He laughed, and Nicky laughed, and they were
instinctively aware of liking each other. He was about thirty, Nicky
supposed; a sandy-haired, rather stockily-built man with very bright
grey-blue eyes and a pale, pleasantly absent-minded face. An Irishman named
Byrne, he said, and not attached to that particular church—merely a
friend of the priest in charge. He himself was shortly going out to a parish,
if it could be called such, in South America—a tract of swamp and
jungle that he could not cross in less than a fortnight, so he would have
plenty of work. He was sailing at the end of the week, on the Megantic. After
he had talked for some time about his own affairs, he seemed to recollect
that Nicky had his too, and remarked that it must be annoying to be so famous
that one daren’t walk about the streets— “Though, of
course,” he added, shrewdly, “it’s good advertisement for
you, I suppose, so you can’t really object to it.”

“I loathe it,” answered Nicky, and began to say a great many
things that were in his mind. Gradually, however, as he talked, there came
upon him a curious and entirely novel sensation—the sensation that
somebody else was not overwhelmingly interested in him. It was not that the
priest was inattentive, or showed any signs of boredom or displeasure; it was
merely his very gentle air of having had, all along, more pressing matters to
think about, and of still, despite Nicky, contriving to have them. Nicky was
puzzled. All his life he had been used to occupying the centre of the stage;
his good looks and wits had won it for him, equally from men and women, and
though he was always prepared for hostility, the one thing he never expected
was indifference. Yet this man did seem, in a sort of way, indifferent. It
was agreeable to find him unmoved by the name of Raphael Rassova, but less so
to find him equally unmoved by the bitterest unmasking of that personage. All
he said, in reply to a particularly eloquent fulmination, was: “Yes,
you must find it very tiresome. But of course it’s in your power to
give it up just as soon as you like.”

They chatted for some time longer and exchanged cordial good wishes before
Nicky took a cab back to the hotel.

That night he told Sylvia that he must go. But the strange thing was that,
in the very telling, he was aware of a sense in which he would have to leave
something behind, in which he would be linked to her always; indeed, he felt
a touch of excitement in the romantic possibility that he might even some day
come back. And what had seemed likely to be a grand emotional climax turned
out, after all, a mere businesslike discussion of holiday plans. She said she
had noticed his need of a change—a complete change; and though it
would necessarily upset a good many arrangements, Vox and those other people
would have to put up with it. “It’s no use you staying here and
having a breakdown, is it?” Then, almost unimportantly, she added:
“Do you want me to come with you? I don’t suppose you
do—you like having adventures on your own, I know. And I shall be very
busy—probably Vox will have work for me to do.”

He gazed at her as at some miracle being enacted before his eyes.
“I’m glad you don’t mind,” he said at length.
“You’re really enjoying yourself here, aren’t you, amongst
all this fame?”

“Pretty well,” she replied. “But you’re evidently
not, so you’re quite right to take a rest from it. Where, by the way,
do you think of going?”

“I thought of Buenos Aires, to begin with. I’ve never been to
South America.”

“I have. You’ll like it.”

He had two more days in New York—amply filled by the joyous
preparations for departure. No public announcement was issued, and careful
attempts were made for at least a partial incognito on board. Sylvia, who had
had much experience of these matters, was full of useful help and
suggestions; she bought him books for the voyage, and superintended all the
details of tickets, passport, and luggage. On the last night before the
Megantic was due to sail they went out to dine at a fashionable
dancing-restaurant, and some of his lost enthusiasm returned to him as he
gazed across the table at his wife. HIS WIFE. He thought her very adorable,
and the joke of their being married was perhaps, after all, as good as most.
His humour rose into exultation as the night proceeded; he did not even
object when the spotlight was turned on them and, in response to calls from
the other diners, he had to get up and make a little speech. At that very
moment, he was thinking, the cabin-trunks were on board, and his valet might
be laying out his day-clothes for the last time.

Later, at the hotel, she said: “You know, Nicky, you were wrong when
you said I’m not privately amused by this success of yours. I AM. I DO
think it’s funny. And I think you are, too.”

He laughed, and answered, to a question she hadn’t asked:
“Yes, it’s queer—the way I always get tired, and want to
change, and do something else. I feel rather sick with most things, after a
time. I can’t settle myself. Not that I particularly want to, of
course.”

“What DO you want? Do you know?”

“Not in the least. Except that, in a general sort of way, I want to
be ME.”

“You’re YOU all right. You needn’t have any fears about
that.”

“Well, YOU’RE another YOU. We’re quits at the rather
silly game…. Which is all talking nonsense, of course.”

“Yes, all nonsense. Good night, Nicky.”

“Good night, Sylvia.”

The next day, on board, he renewed his acquaintance with the priest, and
as the voyage progressed they became good friends. Byrne, however, was still
far from showing signs of being impressed by Nicky, and Nicky was still
rather delightedly puzzled over the phenomenon. And yet the Irishman by no
means discouraged the youth’s more impulsive companionship. He had an
air of slightly detached tolerance that was a little less than chilly, though
not quite warm; and Nicky felt again that the root of the attitude was the
simple fact that he himself was not, and never could be, a salient feature of
this man’s life. Nevertheless, or perhaps because of it, he was the
more tempted to be frank, and he did not disguise, but rather even paraded,
the fact that his brief past had contained many incidents of which the
stricter moralist might disapprove. During those lengthening days in southern
waters, with the coast of Brazil looking sometimes no more than a
stone’s throw away, the two talked a good deal between adjacent
deck-chairs; or more accurately, Nicky confided, and Byrne listened. It was a
new and somewhat difficult experience for Nicky to tell the exact truth; yet
his life-story, even without the embellishments he usually added to it, was
quite a vivid chronicle. Born after his father’s death, he had lost his
mother at the age of five; she had died during the flight of refugees when
the Germans invaded Roumania in 1916. The family had originally had money,
but it was all lost; and a tragic childhood had merged inevitably into
disturbed and fitful youth. He was luckier than most in having had two
thief-proof assets—brains and good looks; and during his boyhood he
had sensed that his only chance of survival, let alone of happiness, lay in
the exploitation of these for what they would fetch. In a world of paupers
and profiteers he had contrived a technique of living, and that this
technique was not too squeamish in what it permitted itself must, he argued,
be laid to the charge of a society that offered him nothing he wanted on any
other terms. “I don’t grumble at the tricks fate has played on
me; but I do say that I’ve never been able to discern in them any moral
code obliging me to abide by its rules in return.” He gave Byrne
various examples of unregretted misdeeds and seemed surprised when the priest
was neither shocked nor condemnatory. “As for personal lies about
oneself, I almost hold that one is entitled to them— they’re a
protective covering in the choice of which one may show good or bad taste
just as in clothes. I happen to be telling the truth now, to you, but
that’s merely for the novel sensation of nakedness.”

“Well, well,” said Byrne quietly, “I think I find your
experiences rather more interesting than your philosophy. Tell me, if you
like, about where you’ve been.”

“WHAT I’ve been might surprise you more. I’ve had jobs
as a waiter, a ship’s steward, an air-mechanic, a translator of English
books into Russian for the Soviet Government, and a commercial traveller. Oh,
and an inventor. I MUST tell you about that. It’s rather funny,
and—incidentally—it explains how I ever managed to arrive in
Hollywood.”

Byrne seemed amused by the story, especially by the description of the
gyrector experiment in England. “I give you good marks for pluck,
anyhow,” he commented, and then, with a suddenness that was
characteristic of him, took up a book and would talk no more.

They had many such conversations and arguments, which Nicky enjoyed the
more completely because Byrne’s replies were rarely of a kind that
interrupted the copious torrent of his own confessions. Once, after he had
been chattering for some time, and had paused at a point that invited some
remark from the other, Byrne looked up quietly and exclaimed:
“I’m sorry, but I was thinking of something else for the
moment—you’ll have to go over that again, I’m afraid, if
you want me to grasp it.”

“But I really don’t think I could possibly remember it
all.”

“Perhaps it doesn’t matter then.”

Nicky laughed. “Of course it doesn’t. Nothing matters that I
say— sparks from fused wires, that’s all. Much more interesting
is what you were thinking about that monopolised all your
attention.”

Byrne answered, as almost from a dream: “I was thinking of some work
that awaits me. When I get to Buenos Aires I have a three-weeks’
journey up-river to the frayed edges of civilisation and beyond. Yet only two
centuries ago, in that same region, my predecessors were carrying out what
was perhaps, all things considered, the most successful social experiment in
history. In those days cathedral bells rang out over rich provinces, the
native Indians lived in cosy homesteads and their children went to school and
were taught Spanish—a whole nation enjoyed peace and good-humour under
the rule of a few wise and elderly men in black uniforms—the same, by
the way, that I wear at this moment. History tells us, too, that the art of
music throve especially, and that violins were brought over from Europe to be
played in the churches instead of organs. I often try to think what that must
have meant. Mid-eighteenth century, remember—too early for Mozart, but
there would be Bach and Corelli. Entrancing picture, isn’t it? Most
people think of civilisation as something that goes on spreading
inevitably—but it’s really much more like a tide that can ebb as
well as flow. That land where once there were Calderon plays and Bach sonatas
is now a fever-ridden waste inhabited by a few half-barbarous tribes, while
the old cathedrals, stripped of their bells and ornaments, are almost hidden
away. More terribly than Debussy’s, too, because their sea is a green
one.”

“And that’s where you’re going?”

“Yes. I understand that the grand tradition still partly lingers,
mixed up with the older and younger traditions of poisoned arrows and gin. A
friend of mine, a brother-priest, was there a few years ago and found the
natives very glad to have their baptisms and marriages and burials re-
solemnised by him. He couldn’t stay, unfortunately.”

“But YOU’LL stay?”

“I hope so.”

That was the day before the Megantic turned into the grey estuary of the
Plate. The next morning, with Buenos Aires in sight, Nicky sought out Byrne
for what must necessarily be their last talk on board. “Where do you go
when you get on shore?” he asked.

“To Rosario by train, and then by river-boat to Asuncion. It leaves
to-morrow.”

“And then?”

“I have still another thousand miles or so after that.”

“Can I—may I come with you?”

“Good heavens, no—it would be the poorest sort of rest- cure
imaginable.”

“I don’t want a rest-cure, except from crowds and women and
cities.” With sudden emotion in his voice, Nicky added: “I shall
be unhappy when you’ve gone. I’d like to see those lost
cathedrals. And if you won’t have me, I can’t think of anything
else to do. Buenos Aires is just another place where I’d be found out
and fęted within a week…. You don’t really mind if I come with you,
do you?”

Byrne answered, after a long pause: “I suppose I can’t
physically prevent you, but I strongly advise you not to come. You’ll
find it a tedious, hot, and probably unpleasant journey leading in the end to
nowhere that you may think at all thrilling.”

“But I want to come.”

“You’ll certainly want to go back as soon as you get
there.”

“Well, even so, I’d still want to come.”

“Then there’s no stopping you, evidently.” He smiled and
added: “For my part, of course, I shall be pleased to have your
company.”

They went ashore together and spent the rest of the day in necessary
preparations. Most of Nicky’s luggage was unsuitable for such a trip,
and he had to make many purchases, among them being a revolver.

Next day they began the journey upstream in the small white-funnelled
steamer of the Argentine Navigation Company. Nicky was possessed by a deep
tranquillity of mind that he could hardly account for; there was nothing much
to see, and still less to do, yet the slowly unwinding panorama of grey water
and green shore gave him a sense of having found at last some fragment of
what, without knowing it, he had all along been seeking. Byrne was happy
also, but with a more definite eagerness for the future; they talked a good
deal during the warm, lazy hours, uneventful save for an occasional passing
of villages and tobacco-plantations, or the glimpse of alligators basking in
the shallows. The nights were less pleasant, with swarms of flies and
mosquitoes that clustered about the electric globes; but the mornings, misty
and delicate, were lovely preludes to the long, leisurely days. As the miles
unfolded northward changes, imperceptible at first, became definitely
noticeable; the narrowing of the river till it no longer seemed an endless
lake, and the gradual merge of climate and scenery from temperate to
sub-tropical. But there was something else less easy to define—an
atmosphere of deepening mystery suggested sometimes by a high tree visible in
the distance, or a curving sun- hazy tributary wandering in from left or
right. The sky at midday was more brazen; the vegetation thickened and
paddled its roots more confidently into the stream; and the hot winds from
the north came freighted with a curious flavour, subtle and even pleasing,
yet less so if one were alone or had too much of it—a hint of the vast
crepuscular decay of the forests. Nor was it nature only that supplied the
faintly sinister undertone, for soon the ship entered Paraguayan waters, and
there could be seen the scarcely inhabited levels of that inland republic,
with here and there, even after sixty years, reminders of a tragedy to which
the history of no European nation affords a parallel—a madman’s
war that killed more than half the entire population. The sun-blistered ruin
of the church at Humaěta seemed a fitting symbol of bloodshed almost
pathologically hideous.