The Angel Esmeralda - Don Delillo [3]
It was hot and bright all the way back. The woman sat up front with Rupert. At intervals she turned to Jill and me and said, “It is awful, awful, the system they have,” or, “I don’t understand how they survive economically,” or, “They could not guarantee I will get out even tomorrow.”
When we stopped for some goats, a woman came out of the trees to sell us nutmeg in little plastic bags.
“Where are we listed?” Jill said.
“Two and three this time.”
“What time’s the flight?”
“Six forty-five. We have to be there at six. Rupert, we have to be there at six.”
“I take you.”
“Where are we going now?” Jill said.
“Hotel.”
“I know hotel. What sort of hotel?”
“Did you see me jump, back there?”
“I missed that.”
“I jumped in the air.”
“It won’t be Barbados, will it?” she said.
“Read your book,” I told her.
The ketch was still anchored in the harbor. I pointed it out to the woman up front and explained that we’d spent the last week and a half aboard. She turned and smiled wanly as if she were too tired to work out the meaning of my remarks. We were in the hills, heading south. I realized what made this harbor town seem less faded and haphazard than the other small ports we’d put into. Stone buildings. It was almost Mediterranean.
At the hotel there was no problem getting rooms. Rupert said he’d be waiting at five next morning. Two maids preceded us along the beach, with a porter following. We split into two groups, and Jill and I were led to what was called a pool suite. Behind a ten-foot wall was a private garden of hibiscus, various shrubs and a silk-cotton tree. The small pool was likewise ours. On the patio we found a bowl full of bananas, mangoes and pineapple.
“Not half bad,” Jill said.
She slept awhile. I floated in the pool, feeling the uneasy suspense lift off me, the fret of getting somewhere in groups—documented travel. This spot was so close to perfect we would not even want to tell ourselves how lucky we were, having been delivered to it. The best of new places had to be protected from our own cries of delight. We would hold the words for weeks or months, for the soft evening when a stray remark would set us to recollecting. I guess we believed, together, that the wrong voice can obliterate a landscape. This sentiment was itself unspoken, and one of the sources of our attachment.
I opened my eyes to the sight of wind-driven clouds—clouds scudding—and a single frigate bird hung on a current of air, long wings flat and still. The world and all things in it. I wasn’t foolish enough to think I was in the lap of some primal moment. This was a modern product, this hotel, designed to make people feel they’d left civilization behind. But if I wasn’t naive, I wasn’t in the mood, either, to stir up doubts about the place. We’d had half a day of frustration, long drives out and back, and the cooling touch of freshwater on my body, and the ocean-soaring bird, and the speed of those low-flying clouds, their massive tumbling summits, and my weightless drift, the slow turning in the pool, like some remote-controlled rapture, made me feel I knew what it was to be in the world. It was special, yes. The dream of Creation that glows at the edge of the serious traveler’s search. Naked. It remained only for Jill to come walking through the sheer curtains and slip silently into the pool.
We had dinner in the pavilion, overlooking a quiet sea. The tables were only one-quarter occupied. The European woman, our taxi companion, sat in the far corner. I nodded. Either she didn’t notice or chose not to acknowledge.
“Shouldn’t we ask her to join us?”
“She doesn’t want to,” I said.
“We’re Americans, after all. We’re famous for asking people to join us.”
“She chose the most remote table. She’s happy there.”
“She could be an economist from the Soviet bloc. What do you think? Or someone doing a health study for the U.N.”
“Way off.”
“A youngish widow, Swiss, here to forget.”
“Not Swiss.”
“German,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Wandering aimlessly through the islands.