Death, Sleep & the Traveler (18 page)

I turned, I waited. Then carefully I raised my fingers to the heavy mask of flesh that was my face. But then 1 lowered my hands, trembled, detected the first far-off indications of a sound which, in the next moment, defined itself as the sound of water in motion, running, increasing in volume somewhere on the floor above. I exhaled. I wiped my spectacles. I refilled the glass with schnapps. Because now I knew that the sound I heard was that of Ursula in the shower, and I distinctly heard the muffled torrents of steaming water that were already turning her wet skin pink and filling the shower stall with clouds of steam rich in the scent of Ursula’s lilac soap. I tasted the schnapps. The little glass was wet in my fingers. Now I knew exactly what was lying in wait for me somewhere ahead on the cold calendar.

“I care very little about your ‘victim,’ Allert. She was much too young to engage my serious attention. But I do care about what you did. And if they acquitted you unjustly and only because you happened to have at your side a handsome wife, I can say nothing but that your next trial will be different. Very different.” By the time she had completed her last sentence I was through the doorway and feeling my way up the darkened stairs.

‘‘Go to her, Peter,” I said in the dark silence in which the two of us were lounging, “go to her and fill an old friend with enjoyment.”

“That is another poor joke,” he said, rising like a familiar and benevolent specter in the light of the fire, “but a good idea.”

“Ja, ja, ja,” I said to myself as I heard him fumbling his way toward the stairs.

“Allert,” she said, thrusting her soft face close to mine, “have you any idea of what you are doing? I suppose you do not. But you are destroying my romance with Peter. How dare you destroy the sweetness and secrecy of my romance with Peter? How can you be so vulgar as to read my mail?”

“I do not deserve so much condemnation. It was only a love letter. And the envelope was already open.”

“And now Peter’s beautiful phrases about love and friendship are lodged in your head as well as mine.”

“I shall forget them all too soon, Ursula. All too soon.”

But she was not appeased, and the clear snow continued to pile high on Peter’s car.

“Allert,” Peter was saying, “has it ever occurred to you that perhaps you were once a patient in Acres Wild? Before my time, before we were friends? Perhaps in your distant and flaming youth you were once restrained in Acres Wild. What do you say, my friend, shall I look up the records?”

In answer I said I found it difficult to recall my youth. I was quite capable of recalling occasional fragments of my childhood, but of my youth it appeared that nothing much survived. But it was just as well, I said to Peter, and requested him to undertake no bookkeeper’s search for what might well prove to be the notations of my obliterated violence. Nonetheless, when we next met, Peter asserted that despite my prohibition he had gone ahead and attempted to search out documentation of my unpredictable youth. But if I had ever been a patient at Acres Wild, he said, the records of that fact had been destroyed—conveniently destroyed.

“But, Peter,” I said, and laughed, “Acres Wild is not the only psychiatric institution in this small country of ours.”

For answer he simply trusted his gloved hands on the
wheel and turned his eyes from the snowy road and looked for a long warm moment into my own clear candid eyes and smiled his knowing smile.

“Why don’t you get something on the radio?” he said. “Some nice dance music, perhaps.”

Obviously Peter was disappointed that his search had proved futile.

The road that climbed the hill to the zoo was lined at every turn with bougainvillea, with succulents, with small religious way stations pink or blue, with palm trees that cast their rubbery shadows on horse, driver, carriage, and we three silent passengers squeezed together on the narrow rear seat of the black carriage. I smelled the comforting drowsy smell of the old horse, I felt Ariane’s small perspiring thigh against my own thigh. I was aware of the sound of the horse’s hooves and the turning wheels, of the erotic plant life that bedecked our ascent and of the white tiles and silver bells of the little uncorrupted city below. But most of all I saw the white ship anchored and looming down there like some nautical monstrosity in a painted bay. The long line of the hull, the tilt of the smokestacks, the empty decks, the sweep of dazzling whiteness, here and there the flash of some microscopic piece of machinery—it was a shocking unconvincing sight that justified the discomfort of the disinterested traveler in his white linen suit. I could not decide which was less real, the ship or the plodding horse. And yet with every turn of the iron-rimmed wheels and every slow lurch of the carriage, my only urge was to return to the desolation of the ship. So I leaned
forward, stared away to the east, shaded my eyes, did my best to keep our ship in sight.

We passed behind a high box hedge. The bay was concealed behind a wall of cypresses each of which was strangled in a thick climbing growth of roses. The shadows of palm fronds swept before my face like cobwebs. We emerged from our moment of gloom, the hearselike carriage canted upward. The ship was still there.

“Give me a handkerchief or something,” said the wireless operator, “I’ve spilled the wine.”

I watched the wireless officer holding the opened bottle of wine at arm’s length while Ariane brushed and dabbed at the long wet crimson stain that dribbled down the full length of his tunic. One brass button was an island of gold in the vivid stain. Slowly he returned the mouth of the bottle to his narrow lips.

For the occasion of this day’s excursion Ariane was wearing a purple and oddly ruffled silk shirt tucked snugly into her familiar blue denim pants. She was also wearing a pair of inexpensive dark glasses with black lenses and thick white frames that masked the small upper portion of her face and skull and hid her eyes. Between the ruffles of the partially opened blouse the tops of the naked breasts were more than usually visible, and now, as she stuffed the straw bag once more between her feet and put her hand on my knee, again I noted the tightness of her skin and the little field of freckles spread childishly across her breasts.

“Allert,” she murmured above the sound of the shaggy hooves, “so silent, Allert?”

“Yes, today I am silent.”

“You are displeased. But why this displeasure, Allert?”

“I dislike sight-seeing. I dislike captive animals. Today I’m a reluctant companion.”

“But this is a famous, beautiful zoo filled with the softest, loveliest creatures in the entire world. Don’t you take your children to the zoo?”

“We are without children, Ariane. It is one of the things I appreciate about our cruise, the absence of children.”

“That is a sad thought, Allert. Very sad.”

“If I had my way,” said the wireless operator all at once, and passing the wine bottle to Ariane, “I’d pack the cruise with children. Hundreds of children. I love the little tykes myself.”

“So do I,” whispered Ariane, apparently choosing to ignore the obvious truthlessness of the young man now managing to put his arm around her slight damp silken shoulders.

“Perhaps the two of you will be able to study some infant animals while I eat an ice.”

“Allert,” Ariane said then, “be kind.”

So I accepted the proffered wine bottle, drew my shoulder away from the young officer’s intrusive hand which, I knew only too well, was applying insistent pressure on the upper portion of Ariane’s arm. He was dressed in white, as usual he was slouched in the carriage with one foot propped high and his free hand lolling on the shiny black tin fender. Ariane was sitting stiffly between us with her eyes downcast and her slender wet back primly distant from the uncomfortable texture of the old leather seat. Yes, she was sitting primly and silently between us but
nonetheless was succumbing breath by breath to the pressure of the wireless operator’s seductive hand. I shifted again, I smelled the dust and leather of the hired carriage and the heavy aroma of the old unkempt horse.

Again the ship appeared, framed suddenly in a mass of rich mimosa. The wireless operator began to drum his fingers on the tin fender. His wine was swelling inside me like a red cloud.

And then we arrived, we reached the top of the hill, we clattered through the faded painted gates of the famous zoo. We rolled to a stop in the vast spotted shade of an army of diseased umbrella pines, and now even the unfamiliar worlds of impersonal ship and nameless little tourist city were gone. We descended from the carriage, we instructed the old driver to await our return. Ariane recovered some of her earlier glee and sped off in her tight blue denim pants and her passionate purple blouse toward the nearest cages. There was no one else in sight. There was not one child in that entire zoo, only the winding paths, the heavy shade, the dust, the smells of animal waste, the cages that always appeared empty until, after a moment or two of patient scrutiny, some small face would emerge pressed to the mesh, or some strange little body would stagger out of a heap of wet straw on gemlike feet. And overhead there was always the high roof of the diseased umbrella pines.