Bay of Souls (17 page)

He made a noise like laughter. "There may come a time I'll do that, baby. Not now."

"You're scaring me."

"You haven't done anything wrong to anyone," Roger said. "Remember that."

That could not be true, she thought. She was not reassured.

T
HE FACTOR
was a yellowing man in a blue plaid shirt who sat behind a counter near the street entrance to a disorderly shop of some sort. The place had a sharp smell of tobacco and of a bitter liquor that stung the eyes. A second door at the back led to a courtyard where men were offloading sacks from a battered truck.

Michael introduced himself.

"How did you travel?" the rusty-looking man asked him.

"On the bus," Michael told him.

"Yes?"

"Oh," Michael added. "To the east." That was the formula by which he understood Masons recognized each other in Fort Salines. He thought it might apply. "Yep. Eastward. To the east."

It was apparent the yellowing man understood nothing of what Michael was trying to convey. Nevertheless he presented a card that declared him to be Edouard Ashraf.

"Was it beautiful?" he asked. "No? Aha." He seemed pleased. "From the capital? No one comes that way."

"It was all right," Michael said. "Of course I was stuck there all day and half the night."

The Factor looked genuinely sympathetic.

The bus had left him in darkness a few minutes before dawn. His night ride had been fraught with Creole whispers, laughter that included him out. Then, on his arrival, a market had assembled around him in the sudden morning light of the northern city. The sea was nearby, a joyous dazzle. The mountain range over which he had come erupted from deep green shadow. He had been dreading day, the prospect of standing alone there, tropical sun lighting the blood guilt of his skin. But then it had seemed all right.

Factor Ashraf's yellowness was unsettling. Whatever jaundice he harbored had spread over his eyes, soaked the whites and stained his eyeballs. His skin appeared the color of lined foolscap. Together with the shock of blondish hair that rose mysteriously from his lemon scalp like a wick, it made him look to Michael like a wax
santo.
It was all, he assured himself, his fatigue, hypnagogic hallucinatory impressions. But the vertigo he could not shake off was a kind of sensory infection. As though there were really some rough magic everywhere.

"I was told you could direct me to the Bay of Saints Hotel," Michael said. Cautiously, he glanced around but the little shop was empty. On the dusty shelves, packages wrapped in twine were stacked beside medicine bottles that looked a century old. The bottles contained liquids that ranged in color from water-clear to factor-colored saffron to amber.

"I thought it was a different man. An American."

"Well," Michael said, "that's me."

"You're Michael?"

"Yes. Michael."

"You have to be careful," the Factor told him.

"Yes," Michael said. "Have you seen my friend?"

"It's unsafe," said the Factor, ignoring his question. "On certain days it is unwise to leave the city. Beware after dark. Avoid the poorest districts." He spoke as if by rote.

"I understand," Michael said. "I'll be careful."

"Maybe your soldiers will help you."

"Really," Michael said, "I hope it doesn't come to that."

He promptly told Michael the way to his hotel. It was, he said, within walking distance and could be safely walked.

In the market there were butchered dogfish for sale along with barrels of squirming creatures, living tangles of antennae and tentacles among bloody chopped shell. Cockles and mussels, cones and mandibles and trilobites. Everything was wet, slick, bright, stinking and attended by flies. Women wielding box cutters opened crates full of electrical batteries, spools of thread. Little groups of children wandered from stall to stall, unsmiling and silent. Only a few begged listlessly.

"Money," they murmured softly. "
Lajan, blan.
"

He handed out the small crumbling bills he had acquired for his nocturnal nightmare passage through the army roadblock. In the dead of night, small stick-thin boys with gleaming eyes had led him from shack to shack where slumberous officials examined his passport by kerosene lamp, stamped it, variously laughed or scowled at him, beleaguered him with incomprehensible questions he foolishly struggled to answer.

"
Lajan, blan
" wailed the market children in their beggars' patois.

He made his way to the sea, as he had been advised. The streets were poor, of a poverty underlaid with some destroyed elegance. There were thick-walled houses in the Spanish style and wrought-iron balconies hung with laundry. Teenagers in spotless school uniforms giggled charitably at him and said hello,
bonjour,
and did not beg. The ache of forlorn hope, the young. Some of the children were about his son's age.

With the ocean on his right, he headed for the western end of town, the part they called the Carenage. The breezes carried a heavy scent of oranges. An orange liqueur, he had read, was manufactured there.

Sky and ocean together were an overwhelming brightness. With each shift of the wind he caught sour rot from the tide line under the seawall and then the irresistible orange sweetness. Everything dazzled. More uniformed children passed and one long-legged coltish kid halted her friends and came across the empty littered street to him.

"
M'sieu,
" she said. "
Une plim? Souple, m'sieu'.
"

Michael stopped and stared at her.

"
Souple, m'sieu. Une plim.
Give me a pen, if you please, sah."

Michael went through his pockets, jammed with travel detritus: credit card receipts, seat checks, ticket stubs, crumpled bills. Somewhere there was a ballpoint pen. Light hurt his eyes. Sweet laughter. He was the privileged comedian. He gave her the pen he had used to scrawl forms at the military roadblocks. The island governance, however revolutionary, believed in forms. Moving on, he patted himself down for his passport for the tenth time.

He followed the oceanfront boulevard to a cliff overlooking the town. The road forked, one route snaking around the bare rock face to follow the shore and the other curving into a cul-de-sac from which a flight of cement steps disappeared into a wall of creepers and cactus.

Michael climbed the steps and found himself in a garden beside a swimming pool. There was a view across the bay, and atop the Morne on the far side stood the grim bones of a Spanish citadel, recognizable from photographs. There was an outdoor bar adjoining the pool, where a tall man in a light suit and dark sport shirt stood watching Michael recover his breath from the climb.

"Hi," Michael said to him. The man nodded. He was, or once had been, Hollywood handsome in something of a 1940s style. He had a graying black mustache and fine tanned skin and large, expressive eyes. An actor's eyes.

A hotel servant sauntered out to take Michael's backpack. No one asked him to register. Taken to a room with a view of the ocean, he gave the porter a dollar and settled down against the pillows.

Very shortly there was a knock on his door. He rose stiffly and buttoned his shirt. When he opened the door he found the man he had seen at the bar. The man seemed to be looking over his shoulder to see if they were being observed.

"Welcome to St. Trinity," the man said. "Michael?" Michael relaxed and extended his hand.

"Let me properly greet you, Michael," the man said. "I'm Roger Hyde."

"I've heard of you."

"Good things I hope?"

"Yes," Michael said, "of course." The man seemed genuinely hopeful that what she had said of him were good things.

"Lara sends her best."

"Great," Michael said. "Where is she?"

"I have to tell you, Michael, that we've had some major difficulties in our operations. What with the war."

"Of course," Michael said.

"Things have got rather tough."

"Oh, no," Michael exclaimed. A foolish utterance, he realized. He felt a first thrill of panic.

"We've got to sort it out. Lara and I. She'll explain when she comes."

"When will that be?"

Roger smiled, a bit like a hotelier with hospitality problems. "As soon as she can make it."

"Can I reach her?"

Roger shook his head. "The war. She'll explain. I know you're a good friend to Lara. But this is local stuff, you might say. Meanwhile, you're our guest. Drinks on the house. Everything." He was extremely tense but very controlled. "I'll tell the desk."

"Great," said Michael. "Thank you."

"Mrs. Robert will be at the desk if you need anything." He started out the door and paused. "You're not going out? I mean, away from the hotel?"

"I was going to wait for Lara."

"That's the best plan," Roger repeated. "If you go out—we don't like dull colors here—wear something a little red, and keep smiling. OK?"

"OK," Michael said. "Why?"

Roger had what looked like a necktie in his hand, which he proffered. He ignored the question.

"You might wrap it around your head. If you leave the hotel tonight. Got it?"

"Well, yes."

"Sort of a special holiday. Do you have lots of small change? Small bills? Good. We'll contact Lara for you, OK?"

"I understand," Michael said. "Thank you."

The necktie was small and scarlet-colored; it reminded him of a boy's confirmation tie. It was wrinkled like a small boy's possession. He had bought one for his own son not too long ago.

He was at the manageable edge of fear and he wanted Lara with him. He walked up and down in the room for a while until the linen cushions on the big metal-framed bed were too much for him. He lay down exhausted, battered senseless by the bus's motion, and slept.

When he awakened the sun was low over the western quarter of the bay. Immediately he picked up the room phone in slim hope of a message. The phone seemed not to be working. He had a shower and brushed his teeth, for which even the most strenuous-minded guidebooks suggested bottled water. The trip had been difficult but exhilarating and he felt better. The thought that he would see her, that he had broken free into a different life, set his heart racing. He realized he was hungry.

Outside, the declining sun cast light like a bright October afternoon. The few clouds looked high and dry. A waiter was stacking candles at one of the poolside tables. Michael went to the hotel desk where a very old lady with a fin-de-siècle ivory fan told him he had no messages. The old lady, he thought, vaguely resembled Lara.

He sat down at a table, ordered a rum drink and was immediately joined by a man, a
blan
in an open aloha shirt and flip-flops. The man sat heavily, directly across from him.

"Van Dreele," announced the heavy man. "With an NGO, are you? American? Canadian?"

"My name is Michael," Ahearn told him. "I don't work for an organization, not here. I came to look around. And to look at paintings. It's my first time."

"Oof," said the Dutchman, as though he had been poked firmly in the stomach. "How was the trip from the airport? The roads are clear?"

"I don't know," Michael said. "I came from Rodney. By bus. The roads were in pretty bad shape."

Van Dreele gaped at him in silence. When the
plat du jour
arrived—it was crevettes—they both ate greedily. Occasionally Van Dreele would look up from his dinner to stare at Michael.

"I was here last September for the first round of the elections. They thought they could scare me away this time. But not me," said the old Dutchman in triumph. He wiped the sauce delicately from his mustache. "I gave them a hard time."

"And were the elections fair?" Michael asked.

"Well, the Americans' favorites won," Van Dreele said. "Their new favorites. The new improved army." He looked up and saw a young woman coming up the stone steps into the restaurant. "Here's the person to ask."

He introduced Michael to a magazine journalist named Liz McKie.

"What brings you here, Michael?" she asked. "At a time like this. You writing?"

"No, just diving."

McKie assumed an expression of puzzled interest. "Say what?"

"I'm here for the beach."

"No shit?" the reporter said. "The beach, huh?" Van Dreele laughed darkly.

"Well," Michael told them, "I thought I'd look at the native art, too. Buy some pictures."

"Hey, Dirk," she said to Van Dreele, "I know you're avoiding me. Give me a break this time. What is the story on this guy, Dirk?" she asked. "Is he a spook? I mean, he doesn't look like a..." Whatever she had been about to say went unsaid.

"Maybe he's here to buy the hotel," suggested Van Dreele. "It's being sold."

They heard trucks pulling up outside. A party of local soldiery tramped up from the road. Mrs. Robert ran out to meet them.

"Hey, you boys," she shouted at them. "You can't come in here." The three soldiers who had come laughed at her but stopped. A tall striking officer in British-style rig came up behind them; he was laughing too. Liz McKie walked over to him. Their handshake was affectionate. Then the officer and the three soldiers went back into the night. More trucks pulled up.

"They're after me," Van Dreele said. He did not seem to be joking. "Every time they miscount a vote I catch them. They want me out of here."

"I think they're surrounding the hotel."

"But it's being sold right now," Michael said.

"Are you here to buy it?" Liz McKie asked. "Along with the local art?" Still addressing Michael, she turned to perform for Van Dreele. "Gonna run it on the up-and-up? I hope Roger's staying on as manager. Where is old Rog anyhow?"

"He's at the lodge with Lara," Van Dreele said. "I guess they're stamping the papers."

"You wouldn't be down here with Lara?" Liz McKie asked. "Like, are you a friend of hers? One of her
tonton macoutes?
"

One of the old waiters came to the table to tell Michael that there was a message for him. He excused himself and went to the desk. Mrs. Robert had the message, apparently brought on foot by a little boy who stood expectantly by. The message was from Roger Hyde. Miss Purcell was in conference, and the conference might last the night. Michael gave the boy one of his folded bills, to the great excitement of the child, and said good night to the people at his table and went back to his room.