Collected Short Fiction Part 37

'Hey, that was a pretty quick read.'

'I read the last - the butler did it.'

In the smart reception building, well-groomed girls, full of self-conscious charm, chosen for race and colour, with one or two totally, diplomatically black, pressed island souvenirs on us: toy steel-drums, market-women dolls in cotton, musicians in wire, totem-like faces carved from coconuts. Beyond the wire-netting fence, the taxi drivers of the city seethed. It seemed a frail barrier.

'It's like the zoo,' the woman said.

'Yes,' said her embittered husband. 'They might even throw you some nuts.'

I looked for a telephone. I asked for a directory. It was a small directory.

'A toy directory,' the happy tourist said.

'It's full of the numbers of dolls,' I said.

I dialled, I waited. A voice I knew said, 'Hullo.' I closed my eyes to listen. The voice said, 'Hullo, hullo.' I put the receiver down.

'Naughty.'

It was my friend from the s.h.i.+p. His companion stood at the other end of the room, his back to us; he was looking at books on a revolving bookstand.

'What do you think Sinclair is interested in? Shall we go and see?'

We moved over. Sinclair shuffled off.

Most of the books displayed were by a man called H. J. B. White. The back of each book had a picture of the author. A tormented writer's-photograph face. But I imagined it winking at me. I winked back.

'Do you know him?' my friend asked.

'I don't know whether any of us really knew Mr Blackwhite,' I said. 'He was a man who moved with the times.'

'Local writer?'

'Very local.'

He counted the t.i.tles with an awed finger. 'He looks tremendous. Oh, I hope I can see him. Oh, this looks very good.'

The book he picked up was called I Hate You, with the subt.i.tle One Man's Search for Ident.i.ty. He opened the book greedily and began moving his lips, ' "I am a man without ident.i.ty. Hate has consumed my ident.i.ty. My personality has been distorted by hate. My hymns have not been hymns of praise, but of hate. How terrible to be Caliban, you say. But I say, how tremendous. Tremendousness is therefore my unlikely subject." '

He stopped reading, held the book out to the a.s.sistant and said, 'Miss, Miss, I would like to buy this.' Then, indicating one t.i.tle after the other: 'And this, and this, and this, and this.'

He was not the only one. Many of the tourists had been deftly guided to the bookstall.

'Native author.'

'Don't use that word.'

'Lots of local colour, you think?'

'Mind your language.'

'But look, he's attacking us.'

'No, he's only attacking tourists.'

The group moved on, leaving a depleted shelf.

I bought all H. J. B. White's books.

The girl who sold them to me said, 'Tourists usually go for I Hate You, but I prefer the novels myself. They're heart-warming stories.'

'Good clean s.e.x?'

'Oh no, inter-racial.'

'Sorry, I need another language.'

I put on my spectacles and read on the dedication page 'You see,' he said, 'they're all after him. I don't imagine he'll want to look at me.'

We were given miniature rum bottles with the compliments of various firms. Little leaflets and folders full of photographs and maps with arrows and X's told us of the beauties of the island, now fully charted. The girl was especially friendly when she explained about the sights.

'You have mud volcanoes here,' I said, 'and that's pretty good. But the leaflet doesn't say. Which is the best wh.o.r.ehouse in town nowadays?'

Tourists stared. The girl called: 'Mr Phillips.' And my companion held my arm, smiled as to a child and said soothingly: 'Hey, I believe I am going to have to look after you. I know how it is when things get on top of you.'

'You know, I believe you do.'

'My name's Leonard.'

'I am Frank,' I said.

'Short for Frankenstein. Forget it, that's my little joke. And you see my friend over there, but you can't see his face? His name's Sinclair.'

Sinclair stood, with his back to us, studying some tormented paintings of black beaches below stormy skies.

'But Sinclair won't talk to you, especially now that he's seen me talking to you.'

In the turmoil of the reception building we were three fixed points.

'Why won't Sinclair talk to me?'

'He's jealous.'

'Hooray for you.'

I broke away to get a taxi.

'Hey, you can't leave me. I'm worried about you, remember?'

Below a wooden arch that said WELCOME TO THE COLOURFUL ISLAND the taxi drivers, sober in charcoal-grey trousers, white s.h.i.+rts, some even with ties, behaved like people maddened by the broadcast pleas for courtesy. They rushed the tourists, easy targets in their extravagantly Caribbean cottons stamped with palm-fringed beaches, thatched huts and gra.s.s skirts. The tropics appeared to be on their backs alone; when they got into their taxis the tropics went with them.

We came out into an avenue of gla.s.s buildings, air-conditioned bars, filling stations and snappily worded advertis.e.m.e.nts. The slogan PRIDE, TOIL, CULTURE, was everywhere. There was a flag over the customs building. It was new to me: rays from a yellow sun lighting up a wavy blue sea.

'What did you do with the Union Jack?'

The taxi driver said, 'They take it away, and they send this. To tell the truth I prefer the old Union Jack. Now don't misunderstand me, I talking about the flag as a flag. They send us this thing and they try to sweeten us up with some old talk about or, a pile gules, argenta bordure, barry-wavy. They try to sweeten us up with that, but I prefer the old Union Jack. It look like a real flag. This look like something they make up. You know, like foreign money?'

Once the island had seemed to me flagless. There was the Union Jack of course, but it was a remote affirmation. The island was a floating suspended place to which you brought your own flag if you wanted to. Every evening on the base we used to pull down the Stars and Stripes at sunset; the bugle would sound and through the city of narrow streets, big trees and old wooden houses, every American serviceman would stand to attention. It was a ridiculous affirmation the local children mocked us but only one in a city of ridiculous affirmations. For a long time Mr Blackwhite had a coloured portrait of Haile Sela.s.sie in his front room; and in his corner grocery Ma-Ho had a photograph of Chiang Kai-shek between his Chinese calendars. On the flagless island we, saluting the flag, were going back to America; Ma-Ho was going back to Canton as soon as the war was over; and the picture of Haile Sela.s.sie was there to remind Mr Blackwhite, and to remind us, that he too had a place to go back to. 'This place doesn't exist,' he used to say, and he was wiser than any of us.

Now, driving through the city whose features had been so altered, so that alteration seemed to have spread to the land itself, the nature of the soil, I felt again that the reality of landscape and perhaps of all relations.h.i.+ps lay only in the imagination. The place existed now: that was the message of the flag.

The road began to climb. On a culvert two calypsonians, dressed for the part, sat disconsolately waiting for custom. A little later we saw two who had been successful. They were serenading the happy wife. The taxi driver, hands in pockets, toothpick in mouth, stood idle. The embittered husband stood equally idle, but he was like a man fighting an inward rage.

The hotel was new. There were murals in the lobby which sought to exalt the landscape and the people which the hotel's very existence seemed to deny. The noticeboard in the lobby gave the name of our s.h.i.+p and added: 'Sailing Indefinite'. A poster advertised The Coconut Grove. Another announced a Barbecue Night at the Hilton, Gary Priestland, popular TV personality, Master of Ceremonies. A photograph showed him with his models. But I saw only Priest, white-robed Priest, handler of the language, handler of his six little hymn-singing girls. He didn't wink at me. He scowled; he threatened. I covered his face with my hand.

In my moods I tell myself that the world is not being washed away; that there is time; that the blurring of fantasy with reality which gives me the feeling of helplessness exists only in my mind. But then I know that the mind is alien and unfriendly, and I am never able to regulate things. Hilton, Hilton. Even here, even in the book on the bedside table. And The Coconut Grove again in a leaflet on the table, next to the bowl of fruit in green cellophane tied with a red ribbon.

I telephoned for a drink; then I telephoned again to hear the voice and to say nothing. Even before lunch I had drunk too much.

'Frank, your eye is still longer than your tongue.'

It was an island saying; I thought I could hear the words on the telephone.

Lunch, lunch. Let it be ordered in every sense. Melon or avocado to start, something else to follow but what? But what? And as soon as I entered the dining-room the craving for oysters and sh.e.l.lfish became overpowering. The liveried I saw Sinclair's back as he walked to a table. He sat at the far end like a man controlling the panorama.

'Are you feeling better?'

'Leonard?'

'Frank.'

'Do you like seafood, Leonard?'

'In moderation.'

'I am going to have some oysters.'

'A good starter. Let's have some, I'll have half a dozen.'

The waiter carried the emblem of yellow sun and wavy sea on his lapel; my eyes travelled down those waves.

'Half a dozen for him. Fifty for me.'

'Fifty,' Leonard said.

'Well, let's make it a hundred.'

Leonard smiled. 'Boy, I'm glad I met you. You believe me, don't you, Frank?'

'I believe you.'

'You know, people don't believe I have come here to work. They think I am making it up.'

The waiter brought Leonard his six oysters and brought me my hundred. The oysters were of the tiny island variety; six scarcely filled one indentation of Leonard's oyster plate.

'Are these six oysters?' Leonard asked the waiter.

'They are six oysters.'

'Okay, okay,' Leonard said soothingly, 'I just wanted to find out. Of course,' he said to me, 'it doesn't sound like work. You see-'

And here the liveried page walked back through the dining-room beating a bright tune on his toy pan and calling out a name.

'-you see, I have got to give away a million dollars.'

My oysters had come in a tumbler. I scooped up about a dozen and swallowed them.

'Exactly,' Leonard said. 'It doesn't sound like work. But it is. One wants to be sure that one is using the money sensibly. It's easy enough to make a million dollars, I always say. Much harder to spend it.'

'That's what I have always felt. Excuse me.'

I went up to my room. The oysters had been too many for me. The sick tightness was in my stomach. Even at this early stage it was necessary for me to drive myself on.

I was careful, as I always am on these occasions, to prepare sensibly. I lined the waist-band of my trousers with the new funny island money; I distributed notes all over my pockets; I even lay some flat in my shoes.

A letter from home among my papers. Nothing important; no news; just a little bit about the drains, the wonderful workmen who had helped. Brave girl. Brave.

I remembered again. I lifted the telephone, asked for a line, dialled. The same voice answered and again my courage left me and I listened to the squawks until the phone went dead.

I had stripped myself of all my labels, of all my a.s.sertions. Soon I would be free. Hilton, Hilton: man as G.o.d. Goodbye to that now. My excitement was high.

I went to the desk, transferred a fixed sum to the hotel vault. The final fraudulence that we cannot avoid: we might look for escape, but we are always careful to provide for escape from that escape.

While the clerk was busy I took the pen from the desk, blacked out the whites of Gary Priestland's eyes and sent an arrow through his neck. The clerk was well trained. It was only after I had turned that he removed the disfigured poster and replaced it by a new one.

The liveried doorman whistled up a taxi. I gave him a local dollar; too much, but I enjoyed his attempt to look unsurprised. He opened the taxi door, closed it, saluted. It was the final moment of responsibility. I did not give the taxi driver the name of any bar; I gave him the name of a department store in the centre of the city. And when I got off I actually went into the store, as though the taxi driver was watching me and it was important that I should not step out of the character which he must have built up for me.

The store was air-conditioned. The world was cool and m.u.f.fled. My irritation was sharpened.

'Can I help you, sir?'

'No thank you, I am just pa.s.sing through.'

I spoke with unnecessary aggressiveness; one or two customers stared and I instinctively waited for Leonard's interjection.

'Leonard,' I whispered, turning.

But he wasn't there.