The Angel Esmeralda - Don Delillo [8]
We didn’t look at each other.
“How many aboard?”
“Eight passenger, three crew.”
I went inside. There were only two people in the terminal and the counter was empty. I went behind the counter and opened the office door. Two men in white shirts sat facing each other across desks arranged back to back.
“Is it true?” I said. “It went down?”
They looked at me.
“The flight from Trinidad. The six forty-five. To Barbados. It’s not down?”
“Flight is canceled,” one of them said.
“Outside they’re saying it crashed in the goddamn ocean.”
“No, no—canceled.”
“What happened?”
“No opportunity to take off.”
“Winds,” the second one said.
“They had a whole ray of problems.”
“So it was only canceled,” I said, “and there’s nothing major.”
“You didn’t call. You have to call before coming out. Always call.”
“Other people call,” the second one said. “That’s why you’re coming all alone.”
I showed them the tickets and one of them wrote down our names and said he expected the plane to be here in time for the two o’clock departure.
“What’s our status?” I said.
He told me to call before coming out. I walked through the terminal, now deserted. The stocky man was still outside the door.
“It’s not down,” I told him.
He looked at me, thinking.
“Is it up, then?”
I shook my head.
“Winds,” I said.
Some kids ran by. Rupert’s cab was parked in a small open area about thirty yards away. There was no one at the wheel. When I got closer I saw Christa lean forward in the backseat. She spotted me and got out, waiting by the open door.
It would be best to start with the rumor of a crash. She would be relieved to hear it wasn’t true. This would make it easier for her to accept the cancellation.
But when I started talking I realized tactics were pointless. Her face went slowly dead. All the selves collapsing inward. She was inaccessible and utterly still. I kept on explaining, not knowing what else to do, aware that I was speaking even more clearly than one usually does to foreigners. It rained a little. I tried to explain that we’d most likely get out later in the day. I spoke slowly and distinctly. The children came running.
Christa’s lips moved, although she didn’t say anything. She pushed by me and walked quickly down the road. She was in the underbrush behind a tarpaper shack when I caught up to her. She fell into me, trembling.
“It’s all right,” I said. “You’re not alone, no harm will come, it’s just one day. It’s all right, it’s all right. We’ll just be together, that’s all. One more day, that’s all.”
I held her from behind, speaking very softly, my mouth touching the curve of her right ear.
“We’ll be alone in the hotel. Almost the only guests. You can rest all day and think of nothing, nothing. It doesn’t matter who you are or how you got stuck here or where you’re going next. You don’t even have to move. You lie in the shade. I know you like to lie in the shade.”
I touched her face gently with the back of my hand, caressing again and again, that lovely word.
“We’ll just be together. You can rest and sleep, and tonight we’ll have a quiet brandy, and you’ll feel better about things. I know you will, I’m sure of it, I’m absolutely convinced. You’re not alone. It’s all right, it’s all right. We’ll have these final hours, that’s all. And you’ll speak to me in German.”
In a light rain we walked back along the road toward the open door of the taxi. Rupert was at the wheel, wearing his silver medal. He had the motor running.
HUMAN MOMENTS IN WORLD WAR III
A note about Vollmer. He no longer describes the earth as a library globe or a map that has come alive, as a cosmic eye staring into deep space. This last was his most ambitious fling at imagery. The war has changed the way he sees the earth. The earth is land and water, the dwelling place of mortal men, in elevated dictionary terms. He doesn’t see it anymore (storm-spiraled, sea-bright, breathing heat and haze and color) as an occasion for picturesque language, for easeful play or speculation.
At two hundred and twenty kilometers we see ship wakes and the larger airports.