The Boiling Season (25 page)

We did what we could to save the damaged books. I suggested we use one of the clothes irons to press out the moisture. Perhaps I should have worried about the blank expression on Mona's face. Not until it was too late did I realize she had never used an iron before. In little time she had succeeded in destroying every page.

It was hard not to feel as though this would be our fate—a piece at a time the few treasures we had left would be lost. Through attrition we would find ourselves with less and less, until at last we arrived back where we started, a vast emptiness curtained with spiderwebs.

Raoul and Hector knew no more about plumbing than me, neither one having ever lived with it before. Raoul went to check the tubs and fixtures on the second floor, but everything appeared to be in order. With the phones still out, as they had been for months, I had no choice but to send Hector into town for help.

The leak in the library was not our only problem, just the most recent. A few days before, the fountain at the center of the drive had suddenly been reduced to a dribble. We had already discovered, during the last rainstorm before the drought began, that the ceramic roofing tiles on two of the villas were damaged and needed replacing. Water everywhere was rebelling against us.

“It's a sign,” Mona said one evening as she served us dinner.

“A sign of what?” I asked.

“Trouble.” Given two equally plausible outcomes, Mona's predictions always tended toward the less favorable extreme.

Mouth full of okra, Hector declared, “It's a sign that everything's falling apart.”

“Watch your manners,” Mona scolded.

Maintaining his usual silence, Raoul never looked up from his plate.

This was the help with which I was to fight off oblivion. Was it any wonder that depression carried me straight upstairs to bed?

E
ven from a distance, it was clear the fighting in Cité Verd continued to worsen. Not just were more and more guns constantly joining the chorus, so too were more voices. On windless nights I could sometimes hear their shouts as they chased each other through the streets, calling for their comrades. And their screams as they were caught.

On neither side did there appear to be any limit to their brutality. For every beheaded peasant found in a ditch each morning there was a charred soldier lashed to a pole. When I sat on the balcony, I could sometimes see jeeps patrolling the road to Saint-Gabriel. I began to long for the day when they would cross paths with the boys in the windowless truck going the other way, and then all of this could end.

Chapter Nineteen

T
hat night, no matter how I lay my head, no matter what position I tried, nothing brought me any comfort. The heat was no worse than usual, but it lay atop me like a fever, and the bedsheets provided no relief, holding on to my sweat as if out of spite.

When sleep finally came, it did so reluctantly, and the slightest sound was enough to send me back again to the beginning. First it was the cicadas. Then some sort of large-winged insect striking the shutters over and over and over again.

By the time I was awakened by the muffled rustle coming from downstairs, I was so exhausted I was no longer capable of caring. I opened my eyes and listened. A moment passed and the sound returned, barely audible over the ceiling fan. A clank. A shuffle. Most likely it was Mona. She was habitually a poor sleeper and prone to nocturnal housework.

It would be no great loss, I decided, to get out of bed and find out what she was up to.

Toeing the floor in search of my slippers, I began to have doubts. Suddenly I thought I sensed an awful lot of commotion, more than could be explained by a single old woman, even a stubbornly industrious one.

I got up silently, cautiously opening the door. Barefoot, I crept down the corridor, taking the stairs slowly, careful to remain in the shadows, away from the moonlight. At the landing halfway down, I stopped. Crouching there, I saw movement in the lobby below. My eyes needed time to adjust to the dark. It was difficult to distinguish, but I thought I counted as many as five men, darting in and out of view. On the floor beside the reception desk two more men squatted side by side, stuffing something into a sack.

I did not move or make a sound. What was I to do, one man against seven? I had no way of knowing if they were armed.

They did not talk—there was no whispering. They seemed to know what they were doing. It was as though they had known in advance what they would find here and where they would find it. If I could get outside, I thought, I could wake Raoul. Together we had a chance of scaring them off.

I managed to slip down the rest of the way unseen. At the bottom of the stairs, the sofa and a chaise longue gave me something behind which to hide. But I was running out of time. In the library, a set of French doors opened onto the side terrace. That was where I would make my escape. I need only wait for the man in there to come out. Then I saw him, rushing past. In his arms he carried three crystal ashtrays. As I got up to run, I caught a glimpse of his face.

“Georges,” I said, “what are you doing?” He looked at me almost sadly, the same expression I had seen on his face the day, eight months before, that he had served me lunch for the last time.

I neither heard nor saw the man who came upon me from behind.

W
hen I awoke it was morning, and the men and the sacks were gone. They had taken the silver and the crystal and all of the appliances they could carry. They had taken some of the vases and paintings and left others. I wondered if they had known something about their relative values, or if they had simply taken the ones they liked.

Mona wrapped my head, reprimanding me for having been so stupid.

“You're lucky they didn't kill you,” she said.

“What was I to do? Just let them get away?”

“Is it worth getting killed for an ashtray?”

“It's the principle.”

She rolled her eyes.

I sent Raoul to inspect the guesthouse and the villas, and he reported back that they appeared untouched. The men had known most of the valuables were here.

H
ector found a locksmith who could change the lock on the gate. I had been a fool not to think of that sooner. For me, the saddest consequence was that the key M. Guinee had given me was now just a memento, no longer able to open anything. I put it on the shelf with his icons. I had arranged my father's icons there, too, hoping the two of them might find some kind of comfort in the mingling of their saints.

After the lock was taken care of, Mona brought Hector up to see me.

“I have another errand for you,” I said. “I need you to find my friend Paul and ask him to come. I have to see him today.”

I gave Hector money for the bus and told him where Paul lived.

“I know Paul,” Hector said as soon as I named my old neighborhood.

“How do you know Paul?”

He smiled. “Everyone knows Paul.”

“Why?”

Hector shrugged. “He's the man.”

My head was throbbing and I could not begin to imagine what he meant. Nor did I particularly care. “Just go and get him.”

Two hours later I heard honking at the gate, and Mona went down to let them in. Standing unsteadily on the balcony, I watched a red sedan with a white convertible roof roll down the drive, its headlights hooded in the bright sun, a small beaming head sticking out of one of the back windows. Paul had gotten his new car after all. And not just any car. He had gone straight to the top.

M
ona made lunch and served us on the terrace overlooking the pool. Paul and I sat at one table, while his driver and another companion lurked several tables away. The driver was the same man I had met years ago. Like his car, however, he had undergone a transformation of refinement. His shoulder holster, formerly his most prominent accessory, was now just a conspicuous lump underneath his beige linen jacket. His suit was a bit boxier and coarser than Paul's, but nevertheless it was clear their operation—whatever it currently was—placed at least some value on the sheen of professional appearances.

The man wedged beside the driver, who had been sitting in the passenger seat of the car, was similarly attired. What set him apart was his size and the heavy scar embedded in his right cheek. With his sunglasses on he reminded me rather uncannily of President Mailodet's bodyguards.

Down below us, Hector splashed in the pool.

“It's been too long,” Paul said as Mona poured him a cup of coffee.

“We've both been busy.”

“Not so busy that we have to let”—Paul scratched his head uncertainly—“four years? pass without seeing each other.”

“Almost five.”

“It was here.” He poked the table with his index finger. It was one of the few not bearing a heavy gold ring.

“The restaurant,” I said, grimacing at the recollection. “You came for dinner.”

Unshaken by my lack of nostalgia, he leaned forward, as if to share a secret. “I was drunk off my ass.”

It was all I could do not to look away. “I remember.”

He let loose a rollicking laugh, abandoning his earlier modesty.

“We've gotten old,” he said, setting his elbows on the table.

In truth, it seemed to me that Paul had gone to great lengths to preserve his youth. Not just his stylish clothes, but also his well-manicured hair and mustache.

He leaned back, folding his hands behind his head with evident satisfaction. He seemed to have a hard time keeping still.

“Did you ever think we'd live this long?”

No doubt he meant it as a joke, but he could not help noting my hesitation. “Honestly,” I said, “I never thought you would survive to twenty-five.”

Paul unfurled another of his enormous laughs, slapping the table with his open palm. “Me either!”

Even I could not help smiling.

“But you,” he said, more serious now. “You were always different. You're going to outlive us all.”

“What makes you say that?”

He ran his index finger thoughtfully across his lips, as if admiring their shape. “You just have a knack for it.”

Before I could ask what he meant, he turned, and I could see his attention shifting.

He glanced at the gardens visible around the pool. “It looks like things have slowed down a bit for you.”

“Only temporarily,” I said, watching Hector climb out of the pool. The hot concrete at his feet sizzled as he ran around to the deep end. “But I can see things are going well for you.”

“Watch this,” Hector yelled from down below. Paul and I both turned our heads.

Stepping back to give himself a running start, Hector sprinted to the edge of the pool and leaped, somersaulting into the water. Enfolded in a foam of bubbles, his dark form curled to the bottom.

“Not bad,” Paul cried out as Hector resurfaced, wiping the water from his eyes.

Then Paul reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins, and I regretted not having sent Hector away after he had completed his errand.

Coin balanced on the nail of his thumb, Paul gave it a quick flick. Over the banister it sailed, spinning and spinning, nearly floating, before falling with a plunk into the water twenty meters below.

Taking a deep breath, Hector dove in after it.

“You're dependent on too many things you can't control,” Paul said. “A business can't work just under ideal circumstances. You have to give people things they need all the time, rain and shine. I've succeeded because I sell people the things they can't live without.”

“How's your mother?” I said.

“You should come by and see her. You haven't seen the new house, have you?”

I was surprised he felt a need to ask. “No.”

“It's not quite as nice as this,” Paul said, “but I'm catching up.”

“More,” Hector yelled.

Paul sifted through the small pile of change on the table until he found the coin he was looking for. With Hector watching below, Paul brought his arm back and then he whipped it forward, never actually letting go.

Hector was too clever for such an obvious ruse. “Come on,” he yelled.

Laughing, Paul picked up several more coins, dropping them one at a time into his palm. As if he were shooting dice, he gave them a shake. Then, all at once, he let them go.

Hector stood frozen as a swarm of coins twisted and tumbled in the air, shooting off sparks of sunlight. They broke the surface of the water in sudsy streaks, and Hector dove in after them, reaching out with both hands, trying to catch all of them at once.

Paul pointed to the bloody bandage in my hair. “Does that have anything to do with why you called me here?”

I nodded. My head still hurt to move.

“What did they get?”

“Everything,” I said.

“Someone you know?”

“A man who used to work here. A waiter named Georges.”

Paul's face turned grim. “You can't trust anybody anymore.”

A
fter lunch, Paul and I left the others behind and went for a walk through the preserve. At first he seemed unsettled by what he saw, rounding each bend as if he expected to be ambushed by the trees.

“They say the whole island was once like this,” he said after I showed him one of the springs. “Can you imagine?”

Could he really have forgotten that I was the one who told him that?

“I try to,” I said. “Every time I come down here, I try to imagine what it would have been like to live here then.”

“Pretty miserable,” Paul said, “if you ask me.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I don't like sleeping outside in the rain.” Paul stopped to light a cigarette. “And I don't think I'd look good in a loincloth.”

“But think how peaceful it would be.”

“Wouldn't that get boring after a while?”

“Not if it was the only thing you ever knew.”

“You're forgetting one thing,” Paul said, taking a deep drag. “While you're frolicking in your stream or whittling bird whistles, some other tribe”—and here he turned and pointed back toward the hills behind the manor house— “is sharpening their sticks and arrows, and they're going to come down here and rape your women and have you for dinner.”

“There were no cannibals.”

“That's not the point,” he said.

“How is that any different from the way it is now?”

Paul dropped his spent cigarette in the dirt.

“I didn't say it was.”

When he turned away, I pushed a pile of dirt and leaves over the shriveled butt.

“If I'm going to get killed,” Paul said, “I'd rather be in a soft bed than on the muddy ground.”

“I disagree,” I said as we headed back, following the path to the manor house. “I think there was a time when it was possible to live in peace. There had to have been safe places. Maybe up in the mountains.”

“You're probably right,” he said. “There probably still are. But I don't think you'd want to live there.”

“Why not?”

By then we had reached the upper lawn. Standing at the edge of the drive, Paul threw open his arms to embrace the manor house.

“Because you'd have to give up all of this.”

He was smiling, and I decided to take it as a joke. A man with an automobile such as his could not possibly accuse me of being interested only in material things.

Ahead of us I saw his men descending the stairs, Hector trailing behind.

“There's just one thing I don't get,” Paul said as he stopped to light a new cigarette. “Don't you get lonely out here?”

“Not really,” I said. “I have Hector.”

Paul shook his head and chuckled, and a column of smoke strafed from his teeth. “There's lots of nice girls in Cité Verd,” he said, thumbing over his shoulder toward the trees. “And I know just the one for you. A regular schoolgirl. The sweetest thing you've ever seen. But the moment she wraps her legs around you—”

“Don't be crude,” I said.

His eyes narrowed as he took another long draw. I could hear the paper burn. “Don't you ever need to let off steam?”

“Not like that.”

He shrugged. “If I was you, I would have exploded a long time ago.”

There were footsteps on the gravel behind me.

The driver opened the back door of the car, and Paul got in, followed by Hector.

“I'll take him home,” Paul said as he rolled down the window. “And tomorrow someone will be stopping by with something that should fix your problem. Your security problem, that is. If you change your mind about the other thing, let me know.”