Sorcerers!, page 16
Still, no bus.
Presently he became aware of feeling somewhat ill at ease, he could not say why. He pulled his long fair beard, and scowled.
One of the aged veterans said, softly, "Sir, de mon hailing you."
With an effort, Limekiller focused his eyes. There. There in front of the pink store building. Someone in the street, calling, beckoning.
"De Tork hailing you, sir. Best go see what he want."
Tony Mikeloglu wanted to tell him something? Limekiller, with long strides strolled down to see. "I did not wish to allow you to remain standing in the sun, sir. I am afraid I did not ask your name. Mr. Limekiller?—Interesting name. Ah. Yes. My brother-in-law's brother has just telephoned me from King Town, Mr. Limekiller. I am afraid that the bus is not coming today. Breakdown?"
Under his breath, Limekiller muttered something coarse and disappointed.
"Pit-ty about the railroad," a deep voice said, from inside the store. "Klondike to Cape Horn. Excellent idea. Vi-sion. But they never built it. Pit-ty."
Limekiller shifted from one foot to another. Half, he would go back to the hotel. Half, he would go somewhere else. (They, she, no one was coming. What did it matter)? Anywhere. Where? But the problem was swiftly solved. Once again, and again without offense, the merchant took him by the arm. "Do not stand outside in the sun, sir. Do come inside the shop. In the shade. And have something cold to drink." And by this time Jack was already there. "Do you know Captain Sneed?"
Small, khaki-clad, scarlet-faced. Sitting at the counter, which was serving as an unofficial bar. "I suppose you must have often wondered," said Captain Sneed, in a quarterdeck voice, "why the Spaniard didn't settle British Hidalgo when he'd settled everywhere else round about?"
"—Well—"
"Didn't know it was here, Old Boy! Couldn't have gotten here if he did, you see. First of all," he said, drawing on the counter with his finger dipped in the water which had distilled from his glass (Tony now sliding another glass, tinkling with, could it be?—yes, it was! Ice!—over to Jack, who nodded true thanks, sipped)—"First of all, you see, coming from east to west, there's Pharaoh's Reef—quite enough to make them sheer off south in a bit of a damned hurry, don't you see. Then there's the Anne of Denmark Island's Reef, even bigger! And suppose they'd sailed south to avoid Anne of Denmark Island's Reef? Eh? What would they find, will you tell me that?"
"Carpenter's Reef. . .unless it's been moved," said Jack.
Sneed gave a great snort, went on, "Exactly! Well, then—now, even if they'd missed Pharaoh's Reef and got pahst it . . . even if they'd missed Anne of Denmark Island's Reef and got pahst it . . . even if they'd missed Carpenter's Reef and got pahst it . . . why, then there's that great long Barrier Reef, don't you see, one of the biggest in the world. (Of course, Australia's the biggest one. . . .) No. No, Old Boy. Only the British lads knew the way through the Reef, and you may be sure that they were not pahssing out the information to the Spaniard, no, ho-ho!"
Well (thought Jack, in the grateful shade of the shop), maybe so. It was an impressive thought, that, of infinite millions of coral polyps laboring and dying and depositing their stony "bones" in order to protect British Hidalgo (and, incidentally, though elsewhere, Australia) from "the Spaniard."
"Well!" Captain Sneed obliterated his watery map with a sweep of his hand. "Mustn't mind me, Old Boy. This is my own King Charles's head, if you want to know. It's just the damnable cheek of those Spaniards there, there, in Spanish Hidalgo, still claiming this blessed little land of ours as their own, when they had never even set their foot upon it!" And he blew out his scarlet face and actually said "Herrumph"—a word which Jack had often seen but never, till now, actually heard.
And then Tony Mikeloglu, who had evidently gone through all, all of this many, many times before, said, softly, "My brother-in-law's brother had just told me on the telephone from King Town—"
"Phantom relay, it has—the telephone, you know—sorry, Tony, forgive me—what does your damned crook of a kinsman tell you from King Town?"
". . .tells me that there is a rumor that the Pike Estate has finally been settled, you know."
Not again? Always . . . thought Limekiller.
But Captain Sneed said, Don't you believe it! "Oh. What? 'A rumor,' yes, well, you may believe that. Always a rumor. Why didn't the damned fellow make a proper will? Eh? For that matter, why don't you, Old Christopher?"
There was a sound more like a crackle of cellophane than anything else. Jack turned to look; there in an especially shadowy corner was a man even older, even smaller, than Captain Sneed; and exposed toothless gums as he chuckled.
"Yes, why you do not, Uncle Christopher?" asked Tony.
In the voice of a cricket who has learned to speak English with a strong Turkish accent, Uncle Christopher said that he didn't believe in wills.
"What's going to become of all your damned doubloons, then, when you go pop?" asked Captain Sneed. Uncle Christopher only smirked and shrugged. "Where have you concealed all that damned money which you accumulated all those years you used to peddle bad rum and rusty roast-beef tins round about the bush camps? Who's going to get it all, eh?"
Uncle Christopher went hickle-hickle. "I know who going get it," he said. Sh'sh, sh'sh, sh'sh . . . His shoulders, thin as a butterfly 's bones, heaved his amusement.
"Yes, but how are they going to get it? What? How are you going to take care of that? Once you're dead."
Uncle Christopher, with a concluding crackle, said, "I going do like the Indians do. . . ."
Limekiller hadn't a clue what the old man meant, but evidently Captain Sneed had. "What?" demanded Captain Sneed. "Come now, come now, you don't really believe all that, do you? You do? You do! Tush. Piffle. The smoke of all those bush camps has addled your brains. Shame on you. Dirty old pagan. Disgusting. Do you call yourself a Christian and a member of a church holding the Apostolic Succession? Stuff!"
The amiable wrangle went on. And, losing interest in it, Limekiller once again became aware of feeling ill at ease. Or . . . was it . . . could it be? . . . ill?
In came a child, a little girl; Limekiller had seen her before. She was perhaps eight years old. Where had he seen her?
"Ah," said Mikeloglu, briskly the merchant again. "Here is me best customer. She going make me rich, not true, me Betty gyel? What fah you, chaparita?"
White rice and red beans were for her, and some coconut oil in her own bottle was for her, and some tea and some chile peppers (not very much of any of these items, though) and the inevitable tin of milk. (The chief difference between small shops and large shops in St. Michael's was that the large ones had a much larger selection of tinned milk.) Tony weighed and poured, wrapped and tied. And looked at her expectantly.
She untied her handkerchief, knot by knot, and counted out the money. Dime by dime. Penny by penny. Gave them all a shy smile, left. "No fahget me when you rich, me Bet-ty gyel," Tony called after her. "Would you believe, Mr. Limekiller, she is one of the grandchildren of old Mr. Pike?"
"Then why isn't she rich already? Did the others get it all?—Oh. I forgot. Estate not settled."
Captain Sneed grunted. "Wouldn't help her even if the damned estate were settled. An outside child of an outside child. Couldn't inherit if the courts ever decide that he died intestate, and of course: no mention of her in any will . . . if there is any will . . ." An outside child. How well Jack knew that phrase by now. Marriage and giving in marriage was one thing in British Hidalgo; begetting and bearing of children, quite another thing. No necessary connection. "Do you have any children?" "Well, I has four children." Afterthought: "Ahnd t'ree oetside." Commonest thing in the world. Down here.
"What's wrong with you, Old Boy?" asked Captain Sneed. "You look quite dicky."
"Feel rotten," Limekiller muttered, suddenly aware of feeling so. "Bones all hurt."
Immediate murmurs of sympathy. And: "Oh, my. You weren't caught in that rain yesterday morning, were you?"
Jack considered. "Yesterday morning in the daytime. And . . . before . . . in the night time, too—Why?"
Sneed was upset. " 'Why?' Why, when the rain comes down like that, from the north, at this time of year, they call it 'a fever rain. . . ."
Ah. That was what the old woman had called out to him, urging him in out of the drizzle. Bide, she'd said. Not an "eager" rain—a fever rain!
"Some say that the rain makes the sanitary drains overflow. And some say that it raises the mosquitoes. I don't know. And some laugh at the old people, for saying that. But I don't laugh. . . . You're not laughing, either, are you? Well. What are we going to do for this man, Mik? Doctor in, right now?"
But the District Medical Officer was not in right now. It was his day to make the rounds in the bush hamlets in one half of the circuit. On one other day he would visit the other half. And in between, he was in town holding clinics, walking his wards in the hospital there on one of the hills, and attending to his private patients. Uncle Christopher produced from somewhere a weathered bottle of immense pills which he assured them were quinine, shook it and rattled it like some juju gourd as he prepared to pour them out.
But Captain Sneed demurred. "Best save that till we can be sure that it is malaria. Not they use quinine nowadays. Mmm. No chills, no fever? Mmm. Let me see you to your room at the hotel." And he walked Limekiller back, saw him not only into his room but into his bed, called for "some decent sheets and some blankets, what sort of a kip are you running here, Antonoglu?" Antonoglu's mother, a very large woman in a dress as black and voluminous as the tents of Kedar, came waddling in with sighs and groans and applied her own remedy: a string of limes, to be worn around the neck. The maid aspersed the room with holy water.
"I shall go and speak to the pharmacist," Captain Sneed said, briskly. "What—?" For Limekiller, already feeling not merely rotten but odd, had beckoned to him. "Yes?"
Rotten, aching, odd or not, there was something that Limekiller wanted taken care of. "Would you ask anyone to check," he said, carefully. "To check the bus? The bus when it comes in. Two young ladies. One red-haired. When it comes in. Would you check. Ask anyone. Bus. Red-haired. Check. If no breakdown. Beautiful. Would you. Any. Please? Oh."
Captain Sneed and the others exchanged looks.
"Of course, Old Boy. Don't worry about it. All taken care of. Now." He had asked for something. It had not come. "What, not even a thermometer? What? Why, what do you mean, 'You had one but the children broke it'? Get another one at once. Do you wish to lose your license? Never mind. I shall get another one at once. And speak to the pharmacist. Antonoglu-khan-um, the moment he begins to sweat, or his teeth chatter, send me word.
"Be back directly," he said, over his shoulder.
But he was not back directly.
Juan Antonoglu was presently called away to take care of Home incoming guests from the lumber camps. He repeated Captain Sneed's words to his mother, who, in effect, told him not to tell her how to make yogurt. She was as dutiful as anyone could be, and, after a while, her widower son's children coming home, duty called her to start dinner. She repeated the instructions to the maid, whose name was Purificación. Purificación watched the sick man carefully. Then, his eyes remaining closed, she tiptoed out to look for something certain to be of help for him, namely a small booklet of devotions to the Señor de Esquipulas, whose cultus was very popular in her native republic. But it began to drizzle again: out she rushed to, first, get the clothes off the line and, second, to hang them up in the lower rear hall.
Limekiller was alone.
The mahogany press had been waiting for this. It now assumed its rightful shape, which was that of an elderly gentleman rather expensively dressed in clothes rather old-fashioned in cut, and, carrying a long . . . something . . . in one hand, came over to Jack's bed and looked at him most earnestly. Almost reproachfully. Giving him a hand to help him out of bed, in a very few moments he had Limekiller down the stairs and then, somehow, they were out on the river; and then . . . somehow . . . they were in the river. No.
Not exactly.
Not at all.
They were under the river.
Odd.
Very odd.
A hundred veiled eyes looked at them.
Such a dim light. Not like anything familiar. Wavering. What was that. A crocodile. I am getting out of here, said Limekiller, beginning to sweat profusely. This was the signal for everyone to let Captain Sneed know. But nobody was there. Except Limekiller. And, of course, the old man.
And, of course, the crocodile.
And, it now became clear, quite a number of other creatures. All reptilian. Why was he not terrified, instead of being merely alarmed? He was in fact, now that he came to consider it, not even all that alarmed. The creatures were looking at him. But there was somehow nothing terrifying in this. It seemed quite all right for him to be there.
The old man made that quite clear.
Quite clear.
"Is he delirious?" the redhead asked. Not just plain ordinary red. Copper-red.
"I don't have enough Spanish to know if saying 'barba amarilla' means that you're delirious, or not. Are you delirious?" asked the other one. The Short. Brown hair. Plain ordinary Brown.
" 'Barba amarilla' means 'yellow beard,' " Limekiller explained. Carefully.
"Then you aren't delirious. I guess—What does 'yellow beard' mean, in this context?"
But he could only shake his head.
"I mean, we can see that you do have a blond beard. Well, blond in parts. Is that your nickname? No."
Coppertop said, anxiously, "His pulse seems so funny, May!" She was the Long. So here they were. The Long and the Short of it. Them. He gave a sudden snort of laughter.
"An insane cackle if ever I heard one," said the Short. "Hm, Hmm. You're right, Felix. It does seem so funny. Mumping all around the place—Oh, hello!"
Old Mrs. Antonoglu was steaming slowly down the lake, all the other vessels bobbing as her wake reached them. Very odd. Because it still was old Mrs. Antonoglu in her black dress and not really the old Lake Mickinuckee ferry boat. And this wasn't a lake. Or a river. They were all back in his room. And the steam was coming from something in her hand.
Where was the old man with the sharp face? Tan old man. Clear. Things were far from clear, but—
"What I bring," the old woman said, slowly and carefully and heavily, just the way in which she walked, "I bring 'im to drink for 'ealth, poor sick! Call the . . . call the . . . country yerba," she said, dismissing the missing words.
The red-haired Long said. "Oh, good!"
Spoon by bitter spoonful she fed it to him. Sticks of something. Boiled in water. A lot of it dribbled down his beard. "Felix," what an odd name. She wiped it carefully with Kleenex.
"But 'Limekiller' is just as odd," he felt it only fair to point out.
"Yes," said the Short. "You certainly are. How did you know we were coming? We weren't sure, ourselves. Nor do we know you. Not that it matters. We are emancipated women. Ride bicycles. But we don't smoke cheroots, and we are not going to open an actuarial office with distempered walls, and the nature of Mrs. Warren's profession does not bother us in the least: in fact, we have thought, now and then, of entering it in a subordinate capacity. Probably won't, though. Still . . ."
Long giggled. Short said that the fact of her calling her Felix instead of Felicia shouldn't be allowed to give any wrong ideas. It was just that Felicia always sounded so goddamn silly. They were both talking at once. The sound was very comforting.
The current of the river carried them all off, and then it got so very still.
Quite early next morning.
Limekiller felt fine.
So he got up and got dressed. Someone, probably Purificación, had carefully washed his clothes and dried and ironed them. He hadn't imagined everything: there was the very large cup with the twigs of country yerba in it. He went downstairs in the early morning quiet, cocking an ear. Not even a buzzard scrabbled on the iron roof. There on the hall table was the old record book used as a register. On the impulse, he opened it. Disappointment washed over him. John L. Limekiller, sloop Sacarissa, out of King Town. There were several names after that, all male, all ending in -oglu, and all from the various lumber camps round about in the back bush: Wild Hog Eddy, Funny Gal Hat, Garobo Stream. . . .
Garobo.
Struck a faint echo. Too faint to bother with.
But no one named Felix. Or even Felicia. Or May.
Shite and onions.
There on the corner was someone.
"Lahvly morning," said someone. "Just come from hospital, seeing about the accident victims. Name is Pauls, George Pauls. Teach the Red Cross clahsses. British. You?"
"Jack Limekiller. Canadian. Have you seen two women, one a redhead?"
The Red Cross teacher had seen them, right there on that corner, but knew nothing more helpful than that. So, anyway, that hadn't been any delirium or dreams, either, thank God. (For how often had he not dreamed of fine friends and comely companions, only to wake and know that they had not been and would never be.)
At Tía Sani's. In came Captain Sneed. "I say! Terribly sorry! Shameful of me—I don't know how—Well. There'd been a motor accident, lorry overturned, eight people injured, so we all had to pitch in, there in hospital—Ah, by the way. I did meet your young ladies, thought you'd imagined them, you know—District Engineer gave them a ride from King Town—I told them about you, went on up to hospital, then there was this damned accident—By the time we had taken care of them, poor chaps, fact is, I am ashamed to say, I'd forgotten all about you.—But you look all right, now." He scanned Limekiller closely. "Hm, still, you should see the doctor. I wonder. . . ."
He walked back to the restaurant door, looked up the street, looked down the street. "Doc-tor!—Here he comes now."
In came a slender Eurasian man; the District Medical Officer himself. (Things were always happening like that in Hidalgo. Sometimes it was, "You should see the Premier. Ah, here he comes now. Prem-ier!") The D.M.O. felt Limekiller's pulse, pulled down his lower eyelid, poked at spleen and liver, listened to an account of yesterday. Said, "Evidently you have had a brief though severe fever. Something like the one-day flu. Feeling all right now? Good. Well, eat your usual breakfast, and if you can't hold it down, come see me at my office."
