Garden of Eden (21 page)

David
was asleep even before his father said good night. Then he woke once with the
moonlight on his face and he thought of the elephant with his great ears moving
as he stood in the forest, his head hung down with the weight of the tusks.
David thought then in the night that the hollow way he felt as he remembered
him was from waking hungry. But it was not and he found that out in the next
three days.

In
the story he had tried to make the elephant come alive again as he and Kibo had
seen him in the night when the moon had risen. Maybe I can, David thought,
maybe I can. But as he locked up the day's work and went out of the room and
shut the door he told himself, No, you can't do it. The elephant was old and if
it had not been your father it would have been someone else. There is nothing
you can do except try to write it the way that it was. So you must write each
day better than you possibly can and use the sorrow that you have now to make
you know how the early sorrow came. And you must always remember the things you
believed because if you know them they will be there in the writing and you
won't betray them. The writing is the only progress you make.

He
went behind the bar and found the bottle of Haig and a cold half bottle of
Perrier and made himself a drink and took it out in the big kitchen to find
Madame. He told her he was going into Cannes and would not be back for lunch.
She scolded him about drinking whiskey on an empty stomach and he asked her
what she had cold that he could put in the empty stomach with the whiskey. She
brought out some cold chicken and sliced it and put it on a plate and made an
endive salad and he went into the bar and made another drink and came back to
sit down at the kitchen table.

"Don't
drink that now before you eat, Monsieur," Madame said.

"It's
good for me," he told her. "We drank it at the mess like wine in the
war."

"It's
a wonder you weren't all drunkards."

"Like
the French," he said and they argued French working class drinking habits,
on which they both agreed, and she teased him that his women had left him. He
said that he was tired of them both and wasn't she ready to take their place
now? No, she said, he would have to show more evidence he was a man before he
roused a woman of the Midi. He said he was going into Cannes where he could get
a proper meal and would come back like a lion and let the women of the south take
care. They kissed affectionately with the kiss of the favoured client and the
brave femme and then David went in to take a shower, to shave and to change.

The
shower made him feel good and he was cheered up from talking to Madame. I
wonder what she would say if she knew what it was all about, he thought. Things
had changed since the war and both Monsieur and Madame had a sense of style and
they wished to move with the change. We three clients are all de gens trés
bien. So long as it pays and isn't violent there is nothing wrong with it. The
Russians are gone, the British are beginning to be poor, the Germans are
ruined, and now there is this disregard of the established rules which can very
well be the salvation of the whole coast. We are pioneers in opening up the
summer season which is still regarded as madness. He looked at his face in the
mirror with one side shaved. Still, he said to himself, you don't need to be
such a pioneer as not to shave the other side. And then he noted with careful
critical distaste the almost silvery whiteness of his hair.

He
heard the Bugatti come up the long slope and turn onto the gravel and stop.

Catherine
came into the room. She had a scarf over her head and sunglasses on and she
took them off and kissed David. He held her close and said, "How are
you?"

"Not
so good," she said. "It was too hot." She smiled at him and put
her forehead on his shoulder. "I'm glad I'm home."

He
went out and made a Tom Collins and brought it in to Catherine who had finished
a cold shower. She took the tall cold glass and sipped from it and then held it
against the smooth dark skin of her belly. She touched the glass to the tips of
each of her breasts so they came erect and then took a long sip and held the
cold glass against her belly again. "This is wonderful," she said.

He
kissed her and she said, "Oh, that's nice. I'd forgotten about that. I
don't see any good reason why I should give that up. Do you?"

"Well,
I haven't," she said. "I'm not going to turn you over to someone else
prematurely. That was a silly idea."

"Get
dressed and come on out," David said.

"No.
I want to have fun with you like in the old days."

"How?"

"You
know. To make you happy."

"How
happy?"

"This."

"Be
careful," he said.

"Please."

"All
right, if you want."

"The
way it was in Grau du Roi the first time it ever happened?"

"If
you want."

"Thank
you for giving me this time because—"

"Don't
talk."

"It's
just like Grau du Roi but it's lovelier because it's in the daytime and we love
each other more because I'd gone away. Please let's be slow and slow and
slow—"

"Yes
slow."

"Are
you—"

"Yes."

"Are
you really?"

"Yes
if you want."

"Oh
I want so much and you are and I have. Please be slow and let me keep it."

"You
have it."

"Yes
I do. I do have it. Oh yes I do. I do. Please come now with me. Please can you
now—"

They
lay on the sheets and Catherine with her brown leg over his, touching his
instep lightly with her toes, rested on her elbows and lifted her mouth from
his and said, "Are you glad to have me back?"

"You,"
he said. "You did come back."

"You
never thought I would. Yesterday it was all gone and everything was over and
now here I am. Are you happy?"

"Yes."

"Do
you remember when all I Wanted was to be so dark and now I'm the darkest white
girl in the world."

"And
the blondest. You're just like ivory. That's how I always think. You're smooth
as ivory too."

"I'm
so happy and I want to have fun with you the way we always had. But mine is
mine. I'm not going to turn you over to her the way I was doing and keep
nothing. That's over.

"It's
not awfully clear," David said. "But you really are fine again,
aren't you?"

"I
really am," Catherine said. "I'm not gloomy or morbid or
pitiful."

"You're
nice and lovely."

"It's
all wonderful and changed. We're going to take turns," Catherine said.
"You're mine today and tomorrow. And you're Marita's the next two days. My
God, I'm hungry. This is the first time I've been hungry in a week."

When
David and Catherine came back from swimming in the late afternoon they drove
into Cannes for the Paris papers and then sat at the cafe and read and talked
before they came home. After David had changed he found Marita sitting at the
bar reading. He recognized the book as his own. The one she had not read.
"Did you have a good swim?" she asked.

"Yes.
We swam a long way out."

"Did
you dive from the high rocks?"

"I'm
glad of that," she said. "How is Catherine?"

"More
cheerful."

"Yes.
She is very intelligent."

"How
are you? Are you all right?"

"Very
well. I'm reading this book."

"How
is it?"

"I
can't tell you till day after tomorrow. I'm reading very slowly to make it
last."

"What's
that? The pact?"

"I
suppose so. But I wouldn't worry very much about the book nor how I feel about
you. It's not changed."

"All
right," David said. "But I missed you very badly this morning."

"Day
after tomorrow," she said. "Don't worry.

THE
NEXT DAY in the story was very bad because long before noon he knew that it was
not just the need for sleep that made the difference between a boy and men. For
the first three hours he was fresher than they were and he asked Juma for the
.303 rifle to carry but Juma shook his head. He did not smile and he had always
been David's best friend and had taught him to hunt. He offered it to me
yesterday, David thought, and I'm in much better shape today than I was
yesterday. He was too but by ten o'clock he knew the day would be bad or worse
than the day before. It was as silly for him to think that he could trail with
his father as to think he could fight with him. He knew too that it was not
just that they were men. They were professional hunters and he knew now that
was why Juma would not even waste a smile. They knew everything the elephant
had done, pointed out the signs of it to each other without speaking, and when
the tracking became difficult his father always yielded to Juma. When they
stopped to fill the water bottles at a stream his father said, "Just last
the day out, Davey." Then when they were finally past the broken country
and climbing again toward the forest the tracks of the elephant turned off to
the right onto an old elephant trail. He saw his father and Juma talking and
when he got up to them Juma was looking back over the way they had come and
then at a far distant stony island of hills in the dry country and seemed to be
taking a bearing of this against the peaks of three far blue hills on the
horizon.

"Juma
knows where he's going now," his father explained. "He thought he
knew before but then he dropped down into this stuff." He looked back at
the country they had come through all day. "Where he's headed now is
pretty good going but we'll have to climb."

They
had climbed until it was dark and then made another dry camp. David had killed
two spur fowl with his slingshot out of a small flock that had walked across
the trail just before the sunset. The birds had come into the old elephant trail
to dust, walking neatly and plumply, and when the pebble broke the back of one
and the bird began to jerk and toss with its wings thumping, another bird ran
forward to peck at it and David pouched another pebble and pulled it back and
sent it against the ribs of the second bird. As he ran forward to put his hand
on it the other birds whirred off. Juma had looked back and smiled this time
and David picked up the two birds, warm and plump and smoothly feathered and
knocked their heads against the handle of his hunting knife.

Now
where they were camped for the night his father said, "I've never seen
that type of Francolin quite so high. You did very well to get a double on
them."

Juma
cooked the birds spitted on a stick over the coals of a very small fire. His
father drank a whiskey and water from the cup top of his flask as they lay and
watched Juma cook.. Afterward Juma gave them each a breast with the heart in it
and ate the two necks and backs and the legs himself.

"It
makes a great difference, Davey," his father said. "We're very well
off on rations now.