I shook hands with him and went to lie on my bed. From there I heard his car door slam, heard him drive off. I was painfully trying to formulate an opening sentence to use in speaking to Racky about this, feeling that the opening sentence would define my stand. The attempt was merely a sort of therapeutic action, to avoid thinking about the thing itself. Every attitude seemed impossible. There was no way to broach the subject. I suddenly realized that I should never be able to speak to him directly about it. With the advent of this news he had become another person—an adult, mysterious and formidable. To be sure, it did occur to me that the mulatto’s story might not be true, but automatically I rejected the doubt. It was as if I wanted to believe it, almost as if I had already known it, and he had merely confirmed it.
Racky returned at midday, panting and grinning. The inevitable comb appeared and was used on the sweaty, unruly locks. Sitting down to lunch, he exclaimed: “Gosh! Did I find a swell beach this morning! But what a job to get to it!” I tried to look unconcerned as I met his gaze; it was as if our positions had been reversed, and I were hoping to stem his rebuke. He prattled on about thorns and vines and his machete. Throughout the meal I kept telling myself: “Now is the moment. You must say something.” But all I said was: “More salad? Or do you want dessert now?” So the lunch passed and nothing happened. After I had finished my coffee I went into my bedroom and looked at myself in the large mirror. I saw my eyes trying to give their reflected brothers a little courage. As I stood there I heard a commotion in the other wing of the house: voices, bumpings, the sound of a scuffle. Above the noise came Gloria’s sharp voice, imperious and excited: “No, mahn! Don’t strike him!” And louder: “Peter, mahn, no!”
I went quickly toward the kitchen, where the trouble seemed to be, but on the way I was run into by Racky, who staggered into the hallway with his hands in front of his face.
“What is it, Racky?” I cried.
He pushed past me into the living room without moving his hands away from his face; I turned and followed him. From there he went into his own room, leaving the door open behind him. I heard him in his bathroom running the water. I was undecided what to do. Suddenly Peter appeared in the hall doorway, his hat in his hand. When he raised his head, I was surprised to see that his cheek was bleeding. In his eyes was a strange, confused expression of transient fear and deep hostility. He looked down again.
“May I please talk with you, sir?”
“What was all the racket? What’s been happening?”
“May I talk with you outside, sir?” He said it doggedly, still not looking up.
In view of the circumstances, I humored him. We walked slowly up the cinder road to the main highway, across the bridge, and through the forest while he told me his story. I said nothing.
At the end he said: “I never wanted to, sir, even the first time, but after the first time I was afraid, and Mister Racky was after me every day.”
I stood still, and finally said: “If you had only told me this the first time it happened, it would have been much better for everyone.”
He turned his hat in his hands, studying it intently. “Yes, sir. But I didn’t know what everyone was saying about him in Orange Walk until today. You know I always go to the beach at Saint Ives Cove with Mister Racky on my free days. If I had known what they were all saying I wouldn’t have been afraid, sir. And I wanted to keep on working here. I needed the money.” Then he repeated what he had already said three times. “Mister Racky said you’d see about it that I was put in the jail. I’m a year older than Mister Racky, sir.”
“I know, I know,” I said impatiently; and deciding that severity was what Peter expected of me at this point I added: “You had better get your things together and go home. You can’t work here any longer, you know.”
The hostility in his face assumed terrifying proportions as he said: “If you killed me I would not work any more at Cold Point, sir.”
I turned and walked briskly back to the house, leaving him standing there in the road. It seems he returned at dusk, a little while ago, and got his belongings.
In his room Racky was reading. He had stuck some adhesive tape on his chin and over his cheekbone.
“I’ve dismissed Peter,” I announced. “He hit you, didn’t he?”
He glanced up. His left eye was swollen, but not yet black.
“He sure did. But I landed him one, too. And I guess I deserved it anyway.”
I rested against the table. “Why?” I asked nonchalantly.
“Oh, I had something on him from a long time back that he was afraid I’d tell you.”
“And just now you threatened to tell me?”
“Oh, no! He said he was going to quit the job here, and I kidded him about being yellow.”
“Why did he want to quit? I thought he liked the job.”
“Well, he did, I guess, but he didn’t like me.” Racky’s candid gaze betrayed a shade of pique. I still leaned against the table.
I persisted. “But I thought you two got on fine together. You seemed to.”
“Nah. He was just scared of losing his job. I had something on him. He was a good guy, though; I liked him all right.” He paused. “Has he gone yet?” A strange quaver crept into his voice as he said the last words, and I understood that for the first time Racky’s heretofore impeccable histrionics were not quite equal to the occasion. He was very much upset at losing Peter.
“Yes, he’s gone,” I said shortly. “He’s not coming back, either.” And as Racky, hearing the unaccustomed inflection in my voice, looked up at me suddenly with faint astonishment in his young eyes, I realized that this was the moment to press on, to say: “What did you have on him?” But as if he had arrived at the same spot in my mind a fraction of a second earlier, he proceeded to snatch away my advantage by jumping up, bursting into loud song, and pulling off all his clothes simultaneously. As he stood before me naked, singing at the top of his lungs, and stepped into his swimming trunks, I was conscious that again I should be incapable of saying to him what I must say.
He was in and out of the house all afternoon: some of the time he read in his room, and most of the time he was down on the diving board. It is strange behavior for him; if I could only know what is in his mind. As evening approached, my problem took on a purely obsessive character. I walked to and fro in my room, always pausing at one end to look out the window over the sea, and at the other end to glance at my face in the mirror. As if that could help me! Then I took a drink. And another. I thought I might be able to do it at dinner, when I felt fortified by the whisky. But no. Soon he will have gone to bed. It is not that I expect to confront him with any accusations. That I know I never can do. But I must find a way to keep him from his wanderings, and I must offer a reason to give him, so that he will never suspect that I know.
We fear for the future of our offspring. It is ludicrous, but only a little more palpably so than anything else in life. A length of time has passed; days which I am content to have known, even if now they are over. I think that this period was what I had always been waiting for life to offer, the recompense I had unconsciously but firmly expected, in return for having been held so closely in the grip of existence all these years.
That evening seems long ago only because I have recalled its details so many times that they have taken on the color of legend. Actually my problem already had been solved for me then, but I did not know it. Because I could not perceive the pattern, I foolishly imagined that I must cudgel my brains to find the right words with which to approach Racky. But it was he who came to me. That same evening, as I was about to go out for a solitary stroll which I thought might help me hit upon a formula, he appeared at my door.
“Going for a walk?” he asked, seeing the stick in my hand.
The prospect of making an exit immediately after speaking with him made things seem simpler. “Yes,” I said. “But I’d like to have a word with you first.”
“Sure. What?” I did not look at him beca
use I did not want to see the watchful light I was sure was playing in his eyes at this moment. As I spoke I tapped with my stick along the designs made by the tiles in the floor. “Racky, would you like to go back to school?”
“Are you kidding?You know I hate school.”
I glanced up at him. “No, I’m not kidding. Don’t look so horrified. You’d probably enjoy being with a bunch of fellows your own age.” (That was not one of the arguments I had meant to use.)
“I might like to be with guys my own age, but I don’t want to have to be in school to do it. I’ve had school enough.”
I went to the door and said lamely: “I thought I’d get your reactions.”
He laughed. “No, thanks.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re not going,” I said over my shoulder as I went out.
On my walk I pounded the highway’s asphalt with my stick, stood on the bridge having dramatic visions which involved such eventualities as our moving back to the States, Racky’s having a bad spill on his bicycle and being paralyzed for some months, and even the possibility of my letting events take their course, which would doubtless mean my having to visit him now and then in the governmental prison with gifts of food, if it meant nothing more tragic and violent. “But none of these things will happen,” I said to myself, and I knew I was wasting precious time; he must not return to Orange Walk tomorrow.
I went back toward the point at a snail’s pace. There was no moon and very little breeze. As I approached the house, trying to tread lightly on the cinders so as not to awaken the watchful Ernest and have to explain to him that it was only I, I saw that there were no lights in Racky’s room. The house was dark save for the dim lamp on my night table. Instead of going in, I skirted the entire building, colliding with bushes and getting my face sticky with spider webs, and went to sit a while on the terrace where there seemed to be a breath of air. The sound of the sea was far out on the reef, where the breakers sighed. Here below, there were only slight watery chugs and gurgles now and then. It was unusually low tide. I smoked three cigarettes mechanically, having ceased even to think, and then, my mouth tasting bitter from the smoke, I went inside.
My room was airless. I flung my clothes onto a chair and looked at the night table to see if the carafe of water was there. Then my mouth opened. The top sheet of my bed had been stripped back to the foot. There on the far side of the bed, dark against the whiteness of the lower sheet, lay Racky asleep on his side, and naked.
I stood looking at him for a long time, probably holding my breath, for I remember feeling a little dizzy at one point. I was whispering to myself, as my eyes followed the curve of his arm, shoulder, back, thigh, leg: “A child. A child.” Destiny, when one perceives it clearly from very near, has no qualities at all. The recognition of it and the consciousness of the vision’s clarity leave no room on the mind’s horizon. Finally I turned off the light and softly lay down. The night was absolutely black.
He lay perfectly quiet until dawn. I shall never know whether or not he was really asleep all that time. Of course he couldn’t have been, and yet he lay so still. Warm and firm, but still as death. The darkness and silence were heavy around us. As the birds began to sing, I sank into a soft, enveloping slumber; when I awoke in the sunlight later, he was gone.
I found him down by the water, cavorting alone on the springboard; for the first time he had discarded his trunks without my suggesting it. All day we stayed together around the terrace and on the rocks, talking, swimming, reading, and just lying flat in the hot sun. Nor did he return to his room when night came. Instead after the servants were asleep, we brought three bottles of champagne in and set the pail on the night table.
Thus it came about that I was able to touch on the delicate subject that still preoccupied me, and profiting by the new understanding between us, I made my request in the easiest, most natural fashion.
“Racky, would you do me a tremendous favor if I asked you?”
He lay on his back, his hands beneath his head. It seemed to me his regard was circumspect, wanting in candor.
“I guess so,” he said. “What is it?”
“Will you stay around the house for a few days—a week, say? Just to please me? We can take some rides together, as far as you like. Would you do that for me?”
“Sure thing,” he said, smiling.
I was temporizing, but I was desperate.
Perhaps a week later—(it is only when one is not fully happy that one is meticulous about time, so that it may have been more or less)—we were having breakfast. Isiah stood by, in the shade, waiting to pour us more coffee.
“I noticed you had a letter from Uncle Charley the other day,” said Racky. “Don’t you think we ought to invite him down?”
My heart began to beat with great force.
“Here? He’d hate it here,” I said casually. “Besides, there’s no room. Where would he sleep?” Even as I heard myself saying the words, I knew that they were the wrong ones, that I was not really participating in the conversation. Again I felt the fascination of complete helplessness that comes when one is suddenly a conscious on-looker at the shaping of one’s fate.
“In my room,” said Racky. “It’s empty.”
I could see more of the pattern at that moment than I had ever suspected existed. “Nonsense,” I said. “This is not the sort of place for Uncle Charley.”
Racky appeared to be hitting on an excellent idea. “Maybe if I wrote and invited him,” he suggested, motioning to Isiah for more coffee.
“Nonsense,” I said again, watching still more of the pattern reveal itself, like a photographic print becoming constantly clearer in a tray of developing solution.
Isiah filled Racky’s cup and returned to the shade. Racky drank slowly, pretending to be savoring the coffee.
“Well, it won’t do any harm to try. He’d appreciate the invitation,” he said speculatively.
For some reason, at this juncture I knew what to say, and as I said it, I knew what I was going to do.
“I thought we might fly over to Havana for a few days next week.”
He looked guardedly interested, and then he broke into a wide grin. “Swell!” he cried. “Why wait till next week?”
THE NEXT MORNING the servants called “Good-bye” to us as we drove up the cinder road in the McCoigh car. We took off from the airport at six that evening. Racky was in high spirits; he kept the stewardess engaged in conversation all the way to Camagüey.
He was delighted also with Havana. Sitting in the bar at the Nacional, we continued to discuss the possibility of having C. pay us a visit at the island. It was not without difficulty that I eventually managed to persuade Racky that writing him would be inadvisable.
We decided to look for an apartment right there in Vedado for Racky. He did not seem to want to come back here to Cold Point. We also decided that living in Havana he would need a larger income than I. I am already having the greater part of Hope’s estate transferred to his name in the form of a trust fund which I shall administer until he is of age. It was his mother’s money, after all.
We bought a new convertible, and he drove me out to Rancho Boyeros in it when I took my plane. A Cuban named Claudio with very white teeth, whom Racky had met in the pool that morning, sat between us.
We were waiting in front of the landing field. An official finally unhooked the chain to let the passengers through. “If you get fed up, come to Havana,” said Racky, pinching my arm.
The two of them stood together behind the rope, waving to me, their shirts flapping in the wind as the plane started to move.
THE WIND BLOWS by my head; between each wave there are thousands of tiny licking and chopping sounds as the water hurries out of the crevices and holes; and a part-floating, part-submerged feeling of being in the water haunts my mind even as the hot sun burns my face. I sit here and I read, and I wait for the pleasant feeling of repletion that follows a good meal, to turn slowly, as the hours pass along, into the even more delight
ful, slightly stirring sensation deep within, which accompanies the awakening of the appetite.
I am perfectly happy here in reality, because I still believe that nothing very drastic is likely to befall this part of the island in the near future.
MS Ferncape
(1949)
Pastor Dowe at Tacaté
PASTOR DOWE DELIVERED his first sermon in Tacaté on a bright Sunday morning shortly after the beginning of the rainy season. Almost a hundred Indians attended, and some of them had come all the way from Balaché in the valley. They sat quietly on the ground while he spoke to them for an hour or so in their own tongue. Not even the children became restive; there was the most complete silence as long as he kept speaking. But he could see that their attention was born of respect rather than of interest. Being a conscientious man he was troubled to discover this.
When he had finished the sermon, the notes for which were headed “Meaning of Jesus,” they slowly got to their feet and began wandering away, quite obviously thinking of other things. Pastor Dowe was puzzled. He had been assured by Dr. Ramos of the University that his mastery of the dialect was sufficient to enable his prospective parishioners to follow his sermons, and he had had no difficulty conversing with the Indians who had accompanied him up from San Gerónimo. He stood sadly on the small thatch-covered platform in the clearing before his house and watched the men and women walking slowly away in different directions. He had the sensation of having communicated absolutely nothing to them.
All at once he felt he must keep the people here a little longer, and he called out to them to stop. Politely they turned their faces toward the pavilion where he stood, and remained looking at him, without moving. Several of the smaller children were already playing a game, and were darting about silently in the background. The pastor glanced at his wrist watch and spoke to Nicolás, who had been pointed out to him as one of the most intelligent and influential men in the village, asking him to come up and stand beside him.