Reflections in a Golden Eye - Carson McCullers [15]
Alison burst out laughing. 'Bravo! Bravo! Anacleto!'
They laughed together and the little Filipino leaned against the door, happy and a bit dazed. At last he caught his breath and exclaimed in a marveling voice, 'Have you ever noticed how well “Bravo” and “Anacleto” go together?'
Alison stopped laughing and nodded thoughtfully. 'Indeed, Anacleto, I have noticed it many times.'
The little Filipino hesitated in the doorway. He glanced around the room to make sure that nothing was wanting. Then he looked into her face and his eyes were suddenly shrewd and very sad. 'Call me if you need me,' he said shortly.
They heard him start down the stairs slowly, then quicken to a skip. On the last steps he must have tried something altogether too ambitious, for there was a sudden thud. When the Major reached the head of the stairs, Anacleto was picking himself up with brave dignity.
'Did he hurt himself?' Alison asked tensely.
Anacleto looked up at the Major with angry tears in his eyes. 'I'm all right, Madame Alison,' he called.
The Major leaned forward and said slowly and soundlessly, working his mouth so that Anacleto could read the words, 'I wish you had bro ken your neck.'
Anacleto smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and limped into the dining room. When the Major went back to his wife, he found her reading. She did not look up at him, so he crossed the hall to his own room and slammed the door. His room was small, rather untidy, and the only ornaments in it were the cups he had won at horse shows. On the Major's bedside table there was an open book a very recondite and literary book. The place was marked with a matchstick. The Major turned over forty pages or so, a reasonable evening's reading, and marked the new place with the match again. Then from under a pile of shirts in his bureau drawer he took a pulp magazine called Scientification. He settled himself comfortably in the bed and began reading of a wild, interplanetary superwar.
Across the hall from him, his wife had put down her book and was lying in a half sitting position. Her face was stiff with pain and her dark, glittering eyes looked restlessly around the walls of the room. She was trying to make plans. She would divorce Morris, certainly. But how would she go about it? And above all how could she and Anacleto manage to make a living? She always had been contemptuous of women without children who accepted alimony, and her last shred of pride depended on the fact that she would not, could not, live on his money after she had left him. But what would they do she and Anacleto? She had taught Latin in a girls' school the year before she married, but with her health as it was that would now be out of the question. A bookshop somewhere? It would have to be something that Anacleto could keep going when she was ill. Could the two of them possibly manage a prawn boat? Once she had talked to some shrimp fishermen on the coast. It had been a blue and gold seaside day and they had told her many things. She and Anacleto would stay out at sea all day with their nets lowered and there would be only the cold salt air, the ocean and the sun Alison turned her head restlessly on the pillow. But what frippery!
It had been a shock, eight months ago, when she had learned about her husband. She and Lieutenant Weincheck and Anacleto had made a trip to the city with the intention of staying two days and nights for a concert and a play. But on the second day she was feverish and they decided to go back home. Late in the afternoon Anacleto had let her out at the front door and driven the car back to the garage. She had stopped on the front walk to look at some bulbs. It was almost dark and there was a light in her husband's room. The front door was locked and as she was standing there she saw Leonora's coat on the chest in the hall. And she had thought to herself how strange it was that if the