The Delicate Prey: And Other Stories

written: “Recipe for dissolving the impression of hideousness made by a thing: Fix the attention upon the given object or situation so that the various elements, all familiar, will regroup themselves. Frightfulness is never more than an unfamiliar pattern.”

He lit a cigarette and watched the women’s hopeless attempts to launder the ragged garments. Then he threw the burning stub at the nearest crab, and carefully wrote: “More than anything else, woman requires strict ritualistic observance of the traditions of sexual behavior. That is her definition of love.” He thought of the derision that would be called forth should he make such a statement to the girl back on the ship. After looking at his watch, he wrote hurriedly: “Modern, that is, intellectual education, having been devised by males for males, inhibits and confuses her. She avenges . . .”

Two naked children, coming up from their play in the river, ran screaming past him, scattering drops of water over the paper. He called out to them, but they continued their chase without noticing him. He put his pencil and notebook into his pocket, smiling, and watched them patter after one another through the dust.

When he arrived back at the ship, the thunder was rolling down from the mountains around the harbor. The storm reached the height of its hysteria just as they got under way.

She was sitting on her bunk, looking through the open port-hole. The shrill crashes of thunder echoed from one side of the bay to the other as they steamed toward the open sea. He lay doubled up on his bunk opposite, reading.

“Don’t lean your head against that metal wall,” he advised. “It’s a perfect conductor.”

She jumped down to the floor and went to the washstand,

“Where are those two quarts of White Horse we got yesterday?”

He gestured. “In the rack on your side. Are you going to drink?”

“I’m going to have a drink, yes.”

“In this heat? Why don’t you wait until it clears, and have it on deck?”

“I want it now. When it clears I won’t need it.”

She poured the whisky and added water from the carafe in the wall bracket over the washbowl.

“You realize what you’re doing, of course.”

She glared at him. “What am I doing?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing, except just giving in to a passing emotional state. You could read, or lie down and doze.”

Holding her glass in one hand, she pulled open the door into the passageway with the other, and went out. The noise of the slamming door startled the monkey, perched on a suitcase. It hesitated a second, and hurried under its master’s bunk. He made a few kissing sounds to entice it out, and returned to his book. Soon he began to imagine her alone and unhappy on the deck, and the thought cut into the pleasure of his reading. He forced himself to lie still a few minutes, the open book face down across his chest. The boat was moving at full speed now, and the sound of the motors was louder than the storm in the sky.

Soon he rose and went on deck. The land behind was already hidden by the falling rain, and the air smelled of deep water. She was standing alone by the rail, looking down at the waves, with the empty glass in her hand. Pity seized him as he watched, but he could not walk across to her and put into consoling words the emotion he felt.

Back in the cabin he found the monkey on his bunk, slowly tearing the pages from the book he had been reading.

The next day was spent in leisurely preparation for disembarking and changing of boats: in Villalta they were to take a smaller vessel to the opposite side of the delta.

When she came in to pack after dinner, she stood a moment studying the cabin. “He’s messed it up, all right,” said her husband, “but I found your necklace behind my big valise, and we’d read all the magazines anyway.”

“I suppose this represents Man’s innate urge to destroy,” she said, kicking a ball of crumpled paper across the floor. “And the next time he tries to bite you, it’ll be Man’s basic insecurity.”

“You don’t know what a bore you are when you try to be caustic. If you want me to get rid of him, I will. It’s easy enough.”

She bent to touch the animal, but it backed uneasily under the bunk. She stood up. “I don’t mind him. What I mind is you. He can’t help being a little horror, but he keeps reminding me that you could if you wanted.”

Her husband’s face assumed the impassivity that was characteristic of him when he was determined not to lose his temper. She knew he would wait to be angry until she was unprepared for his attack. He said nothing, tapping an insistent rhythm on the lid of a suitcase with his fingernails.

“Naturally I don’t really mean you’re a horror,” she continued.

“Why not mean it?” he said, smiling pleasantly. “What’s wrong with criticism? Probably I am, to you. I like monkeys because I see them as little model men. You think men are something else, something spiritual or God knows what. Whatever it is, I notice you’re the one who’s always being disillusioned and going around wondering how mankind can be so bestial. I think mankind is fine.”

“Please don’t go on,” she said. “I know your theories. You’ll never convince yourself of them.”

When they had finished packing, they went to bed. As he snapped off the light behind his pillow, he said, “Tell me honestly. Do you want me to give him to the steward?”

She kicked off her sheet in the dark. Through the porthole, near the horizon, she could see stars, and the calm sea slipped by just below her. Without thinking she said, “Why don’t you drop him overboard?”

In the silence that followed she realized she had spoken carelessly, but the tepid breeze moving with languor over her body was making it increasingly difficult for her to think or speak. As she fell asleep it seemed to her she heard her husband saying slowly, “I believe you would. I believe you would.”

The next morning she slept late, and when she went up for breakfast her husband had already finished his and was leaning back, smoking.

“How are you?” he asked brightly. “The cabin steward’s delighted with the monkey.”

She felt a flush of pleasure. “Oh,” she said, sitting down, “did you give it to him? You didn’t have to do that.” She glanced at the menu; it was the same as every other day. “But I suppose really it’s better. A monkey doesn’t go with a honeymoon.”

“I think you’re right,” he agreed.

Villalta was stifling and dusty. On the other boat they had grown accustomed to having very few passengers around, and it was an unpleasant surprise to find the new one swarming with people. Their new boat was a two- decked ferry painted white, with an enormous paddle wheel at the stern. On the lower deck, which rested not more than two feet above the surface of the river, passengers and freight stood ready to travel, packed together indiscriminately. The upper deck had a salon and a dozen or so narrow staterooms. In the salon the first-class passengers undid their bundles of pillows and opened their paper bags of food. The orange light of the setting sun flooded the room.

They looked into several of the staterooms.

“They all seem to be empty,” she said.

“I can see why. Still, the privacy would be a help.”

“This one’s double. And it has a screen in the window. This is the best one.”

“I’ll look for a steward or somebody. Go on in and take over.” He pushed the bags out of the passageway where the cargador had left them, and went off in search of an employee. In every corner of the boat the people seemed to be multiplying. There were twice as many as there had been a few moments before. The salon was completely full, its floor space occupied by groups of travelers with small children and elderly women, who were already stretched out on blankets and newspapers.

“It looks like Salvation Army headquarters the night after a major disaster,” he said as he came back into the stateroom. “I can’t find anybody. Anyway, we’d better stay in here. The other cubicles are beginning to fill up.”

“I’m not so sure I wouldn’t rather be on deck,” she announced. “There are hundreds of cockroaches.”

“And probably worse,” he added, looking at the bunks.

“The thing to do is take those filthy sheets off and just lie on the mattresses.” She peered out into the corridor. Sweat was trickling down her neck. “Do you think it’s safe?”

“What do you mean?”