The Girl With the Golden Shoes (12 page)

If I never take the money, I wonder if I’d feel a different way? I ain’t know. I ain’t know. But I can’t give it back. It ain’t make no sense. If I give it back I going feel like nothing never come from it. Like I ain’t get nothing for my pain. ’Cause what I feeling right now is pain. Which one carry more shame? A damn prostitute or a careless girl that get rape? I ain’t really know …

She spent the balance of the journey in deep deliberation. Either way, the people of the cove would say she’d gotten all that she deserved, and her name would be a watermark for years to come.
Continue on your ways and end up like Estrella. Go on. Continue. You will see.

When they’d come across the iron bridge that led into the town, Estrella felt a gradual lightening of her mood, and she consoled herself by saying that everything between the cove and town had been sacrificial acts, and she paid homage to all the powers that she knew…God, the
orishas
, the abstract unseen…and told herself that she was not alone, that Vashti and Joseph and the woman with the red bandanna would be sad if they knew what had happened…that she was beautiful and precious…that she’d be missed if she were taken from this world.

“I’m sorry,” said the rider when he helped her off the horse before the statue of Horatio Nelson. Behind her was the lapping harbor. Across the street, behind him, were rows of old buildings on Nelson Square.

“I have it in my heart to forgive you,” she said, “but I ain’t going lie—it going be harder to forgive myself.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“I ain’t ask you for nothing,” she said blankly, scooping sand over the fragile memories, hiding them like turtle eggs. “I have twenty extra pounds. I ask for a ride and you gimme a ride. At the time, I just ain’t know the price.”

“I hope you get your shoes,” he said. “I hope they’re strong. I hope they fit you good.”

“And I hope you get what you deserve. I get my share tonight.”

He touched her hand, and for reasons that she didn’t fully comprehend, she drew him close and kissed him quickly, hoping that he’d do something to make her think that what she thought of him was wrong—unsure of what she’d take as proof.

She squinted hard to watch him mount the horse, but she didn’t watch him ride away.

It began to drizzle, and she made her way across the street into the square. In the dark, she picked her way along a cobbled path that sprayed out from the fountain, taking shelter on a bench beneath a tree.

When the rain began to really pour, she dashed into the portal of a colonnaded building on the square.

Nelson Square, the oldest part of the town, was a collection of fine buildings, some in marble, some in coral stone, constructed in the 1600s—in San Carlos, a period of excess at the height of Spanish rule. Many of them had columns, stained glass, and Moorish courtyards, evoking larger, grander squares in Old Havana.

One side of the square was open to the sea; two sides were closed and the third was dominated by a large brick building with a grand archway that opened on the Queens, the boulevard that rose along the row of former mansions to the governor’s gate, the address of Salan’s and La Sala de Amor—the emporium and restaurant of her dreams.

In her blue skirt and green-striped blouse damp with man smell, sweat, and rain, Estrella Thompson found a spot beside the high stone steps of the court. Before she fell asleep she took her brassiere from her pocket and tickled her nose, grateful that her day was done.

IX.

“Get up, you.”

“What the devil is she doing here?”

“She’s sleeping. Take your time.”

At a little after 4:00 in the morning, while drifting in a dream in which she toured the battlefields of Europe in a pair of English shoes, accompanied by Tuck and her grandmother, Estrella felt a pair of hands against her limbs and sat up to be blinded by a light. In the glare, she saw what looked like effigies…or ghosts…ghosts with heads like turtle shells. They were home guards, Carlitos on patrol.

They were dressed like English soldiers—but not like those in India or Egypt, who sported khaki drill and light slouch hats to keep their bodies cool. These fellows were colonials in an unimportant place, and as such were issued surplus kit from World War I—heavy olive wool designed to hold the body’s heat.

So they were Carlitos, but Carlitos of a special kind—local whites—irregulars who’d volunteered for duty as they’d been raised to do. But their impulse wasn’t bravery or valor, a matter of character. It was hormonal, part of an old, established cycle of blood…the belief that it was better to stop a bullet than to give the people with the most to gain a taste of what it meant to organize and kill with guns.

“Hands up. Don’t move. Are you deaf? I said don’t move.”

Estrella dipped and cowered with an arm above her brows to save her pupils from the light. When her eyes adjusted she observed that there were three.

“Declare your business,” said the one who held the lantern. Another rubbed a billy club against his palm. The third one held a bolt action rifle with the muzzle pointing down.

Declare your business, she repeated to herself. What he really mean to say by that?

Although she spoke English, it was sometimes hard for her to understand official speech. The gun was frightening in itself, but it also made her think of Simón; and she stood stiffly, a nervous grin across her face, trying to look polite, wondering if her understanding was correct.

“Bloody insubordinate,” the lantern bearer said. “She’s trying to be difficult, and I’m running out of patience and time. I’m tired and I’m hot. The shift is almost done. Just make it simple. Lock her up.”

“But I ain’t do nothing wrong,” Estrella said in disbelief. “Lock me up for what?”

“Well, declare your bloody business then,” the lantern bearer said.

“But what you mean by that?”

The one who held the rifle leaned toward the lantern bearer’s ear and said, “According to the proper regulations, you’re supposed to ask her name and age and where she lives.”

The lantern bearer shouted, “Who the hell put you in charge?” “It’s not about being in charge. It’s about correct procedure. Is this how you’d interrogate a spy?”

“Which she is—obviously. Another German in disguise.”

The one with the billy club began to laugh.

Now that is what you call a
boof,
Estrella thought. When he tell him that is like he stun him with a uppercut. Which part of me could be a spy? I thought it ain’t have nobody who could
boof
like me. But I meet my match tonight.

“Are you mocking me, you little shit?” the lantern bearer asked.

The one who held the rifle stepped in front of Estrella to cut him off.

“Little darling,” said the rifle holder, “what’s your name? We’re out on duty. There’s a curfew going on. Do you understand me? Okay. Let me say it in
Sancoche
.”

When she’d heard his explanation, she was irritated with herself. For her, the war was an important thing, and from what the rifleman had told her, she’d wasted their time.

“You’re not allowed to sleep out here,” he added. “Everybody must be off the street. If you want, we can give you a ride.”

“I live real far from here, sir.”

“How far?” the lantern bearer asked in English, stepping forward as he tugged the rifle holder to the rear.

“Way up in a far place, sir?”

The one with the billy club began to whisper to the rifleman, who sucked his teeth and tramped away.

“And what’s that far place called?”

He brought the lantern close against her face so she could feel and smell the heat.

Carefully, she said, “That kind o’ place, sir, ain’t have no name.”

“If you don’t have a place to go,” he told her in a change of voice, “I could arrange for you to have one for the night. I think a night would help you get over whatever’s put you in this mood. What do you think? I could make that happen. Is that what you want?”

The subtlety had missed her, and she shrugged and said, “Okay.”

He took her answer for a taunt and led her down the steps across the square, which had been puddled by the rain.

On the street, adjacent to the statue where Simón had left her, was a car, which in daylight would reveal itself to be a white-walled Buick Century—silver, with a running board and bug-eyed headlamps on its elongated nose.

With the plush interior pressing on her back, Estrella felt relieved. Not a horse. Not a truck. But a fucking motorcar. On top o’ that, a bed to sleep.

The lantern bearer sat behind the wheel and asked the one with the billy club to sit beside him. The rifle holder sat beside Estrella in the back. Someone pressed a button and a motor whirred the iron roof away, and Estrella sank with deep amazement in the toffee-colored seat.

When they’d driven up and down the foreshore road, completing their patrol, she sat up suddenly and turned toward the rifleman and introduced herself in formal English: “I’m sorry. I’m Estrella. Nice to meet you. I didn’t catch your name?”

He nodded, lit a cigarette, and stuck it in his young, impassive face.

The driver tossed his head and ordered, “Stub that bloody light!”

The rifle holder answered, “Go to hell,” and clamped the gun between his knees.

“You don’t listen. That’s your problem.”

“Daddy, I’m a grown man with a family, for Jesus’ sake. I’m not a child anymore.”

The father tapped the shoulder of his younger son, who rode beside him.

“Your brother told me he’s a grown man. What do you think of that? The words were his, not mine. A grown man who can’t do a bloody thing. You would think a grown man raised by good parents would have his own car by now. It’s his turn to do transportation on patrol and he shows up in his father-in-law’s big American car, which he can’t even drive because the steering wheel is on the other bloody side. You would think a grown man would be able to prevent his wife from running around like a common whore. You would think a grown man would stop having bastard tadpole children all over this bloody island without any practical means for their support. You would think a grown man who had strings pulled so he could get into Cambridge would have paid attention and come back to this place with some damn respect. So he fails at everything and you pull more strings, and he gets appointed head of one of the island’s finest schools. But does he hold on to the job? No! He goes off to be some kind of artist, like a bloody fag. You would think a grown man would realize that you can’t build a business or a future or respectability from painting like a fairy, or writing stupid books. Paint a house, for God’s sake. Or be whatever you call the people who serve the books in the library…those ill-tempered spinsters. You would think a grown man would, by now, have taken stock—”

“I get the point,” the younger son objected. “People are different, Daddy. Everybody can’t be the same. Will just needs a little bit of time.”

They’d gone around the square and passed beneath the arch that opened on the Queens, and the six cylinders pulled them smoothly up the grade between the former mansions and the median with the flowers and the trees.

“Time?”
the father shouted. “Who has a lot of that these days? None of us have time. Black Well is a mess. They rioted again. Over what, who bloody knows. We have no bloody coconuts. They’ve all got bloody blight. The frigging Germans just might win the war. And the Chinese and the Lebanese are so deceitful and underhanded, they’re making wads of money trading while we sit on sugar that nobody wants, while we feed cows that can’t bring you ten pounds at the abattoir.”

“We’re part Irish,” said the older son, who’d just turned thirty-two. “Once upon a time we were new here too. But I know it’s not the same. The rules have changed. Now
we’re
the ones who make them.”

“Trying to be sarcastic?”

“No. More along the lines of sardonic.”

“The Lebanese are saints. Of course. Of course. But of course you know this. Your wife is one of them.” He stopped the car and leaned across his seat. “Where is she now? Do you know? How do you know she hasn’t left your house while you’re out here risking life and limb for King and country? The little bitch. Knowing her, she’s leaving footprints on your ceiling. Giggling in your bed.”

The man who held the rifle wiped his face. The car began to move again.

Estrella couldn’t see for certain, but she knew he’d wiped away some tears, and she felt obliged to take his hand and reassure him that he’d be okay, that she knew what it was like to hear that what you love is wrong and that your passions are just careless dreams, that she’d bought from Lebanese people and everything was nice, and that the Chinese them was nice ones too, and that a Chinese girl had helped her with her books…that you had to be a bright, bright man to be headmaster, that you shouldn’t listen when you family tried to put you down, ’cause that is all they do—try to give you bad eye and bad mouth and blight you ambition and bring down you will…that if you wife is out o’ order then is up to you to ask her why she always fooling round, ’cause woman ain’t just wicked so…they wicked when they feel that something wicked is the only thing that’s left to do…like how she, Estrella Thompson, had to pinch a little money when she had to buy a book because she ain’t grow up with people who understand that books is things that people have to have.