“Come on in,” she said. “The water’s lovely.”
“No, thanks,” I said. “Besides, I hardly think your mother would approve.”
“Maybe not, but she’s drunk. Or at least she’s sleeping it off. She was drinking all last night. Noreen always drinks too much after we’ve had an argument.”
“What was it about?”
“What do you think it was about?”
“Max, I suppose.”
“Check. So how did you and he get along?”
“We got along just fine, he and I.”
Dinah executed another perfect tumble turn. By now I was beginning to know her better than her doctor. I might even have enjoyed the show but for the fact of who she was and why I was there. Turning my back on the pool, I said, “Perhaps I’d better wait in the house.”
“Do I embarrass you, Senor Gunther? I’m sorry. I mean Senor Hausner.” She stopped swimming, and I heard her climb out of the pool behind me.
“You’re nice to look at, but I’m your mother’s friend, remember? And there are certain things that men don’t do to the daughters of their friends. I imagine she sort of trusts me not to press my nose up against your windowpane.”
“That’s an interesting way of putting it.”
I could hear the water dripping off her naked body. If I had licked her from top to bottom, she wouldn’t have sounded any different.
“Why don’t you be a good girl and put your bathing suit back on, and then we can talk?”
“All right.” A few moments passed. Then she said, “You can relax now.”
I turned around and nodded my thanks curtly. She made me feel as awkward as hell, even now that she was wearing her costume again. Avoiding the sight of beautiful young women when they were naked: that was a new thing for me.
“As a matter of fact, I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “This morning she was kind of suicidal.”
“Kind of?”
“Kind of, yeah. What I mean is that she threatened to shoot herself if I didn’t promise her that I wouldn’t see Max anymore.”
“And did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Promise not to see him anymore?”
“No, of course I didn’t. I mean that’s just emotional blackmail.”
“Mmm-hmm. Does she have a gun?”
“Silly question, in this house. There’s a gun cupboard in the tower with enough weaponry to start another revolution. But as it happens, she has her own gun. Ernest gave it to her. I guess he thought he could spare her one.”
“Think she’d ever do it?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I mentioned it just now, I suppose. I really don’t know. She and Ernest used to talk about suicide. All the time. And she wonders why I want to go out with Max instead of hanging around here.”
“When exactly is Hemingway coming back here?”
“July, I think. He’d be back here now, except for the fact that he’s in a hospital in Nairobi.”
“I guess one of those animals must have fought back.”
“No, it was a plane crash. Or a bush fire. Maybe both. I don’t know. But he was pretty bad for a while.”
“What happens when he does come back? Are he and your mother involved?”
“Christ no. Ernest has a wife, Mary. Although I don’t think something like that would stop them. Besides, she’s seeing someone, I think. Noreen, I mean. Anyway, she’s bought a house in Marianao and we’re supposed to move into it sometime in the next month or two.”
Dinah found a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and blew smoke down at the ground and away from me. “I’m going to marry him, and there’s nothing she or anyone else can do about it.”
“Except shoot herself. People have shot themselves for less.”
Dinah made a face. It matched the one I might have made when she told me that Noreen was seeing someone.
“And what do you think?” she asked. “About me and Max.”
“Would it make the slightest difference if I told you?”
She shook her head. “So what did you and he talk about?”
“He offered me a job.”
“Are you going to take it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve said I would. But I’m kind of squeamish about working for a gangster.”
“Is that what you think he is?”
“I told you. It doesn’t matter what I think. And all he offered me was a job, angel. Not a proposal of marriage. If I don’t like working for him, I can quit, and he won’t lose any sleep over it. But somehow I have the romantic idea that he feels differently about you. Any man would.”
“You’re not making a pass at me, are you?”
“If I was going to do that, I’d be in the swimming pool.”
“Max is going to help me become a movie actress.”
“So I heard. Is that why you’re going to marry him?”
“As a matter of fact, it isn’t.” She colored a little, and her voice became more petulant. “It just so happens that we love each other.”
It was my turn to pull a face.
“What’s the matter, Gunther? Weren’t you ever in love with someone?”
“Oh, sure. Your mother, for instance. But that was twenty years ago. In those days I could still tell someone I was in love with her and mean it with every fiber of my being. These days they’re just words. A man gets to my age and it’s not about love. He can persuade himself it’s love. But it’s not that at all. It’s always about something else.”
“You think he just wants to marry me for sex, is that it?”
“No. It’s more complicated than that. It’s about wanting to feel young again. That’s why a lot of older men marry younger women. Because they think youth is infectious. And it isn’t, of course. Old age, on the other hand, now, that is infectious. I mean, I can more or less guarantee that, in time, you’ll catch it, too.” I shrugged. “But like I keep telling you, angel, it doesn’t matter what I think. I’m just some slob who used to be in love with your mother.”
“That’s not such an exclusive club.”
“I don’t doubt it. Your mother’s a beautiful woman. Everything you got, you got from her, I guess.” I nodded. “What you were saying. About her being suicidal. I’ll look in on her before I go.”
I quickly went away from her and back to the house before I said anything nasty. Which was what I felt like saying.
At the rear of the house, the French doors were open and just an antelope was on guard, so I went inside and took a squint in Noreen’s bedroom. She was sleeping, naked on the top sheet, and I stood there looking for all of a minute. Two naked women in one afternoon. It was like going to the Casa Marina except for the fact that now I realized I was in love with Noreen again. Or maybe they were the same feelings I’d always had and, perhaps, I’d just forgotten where I’d buried them. I don’t know, but in spite of what I’d told Dinah, there were plenty of feelings I could have tossed Noreen’s way if she’d been awake. And probably I’d have meant a few of them, too.
Her thighs yawned open, and courtesy obliged me to look away, which was when I noticed the gun on the bookshelves next to some photographs and a jar containing a frog preserved in formaldehyde. It looked like any old frog. But it wasn’t just any old gun. It might have been designed and produced by a Belgian who had given the revolver his name, but the Nagant had been the standard-issue sidearm for all Russian officers in the Red Army and NKVD. It was an odd, heavy weapon to have found in that house. I picked it up, curious to find myself reacquainted with it. This one had an embossed red star on the handle, which seemed to put its origins beyond any doubt.
“That’s her gun,” said Dinah.
I looked around as she came into the bedroom and drew the sheet across her mother. “Not exactly a ladies’ gun,” I said.
“You’re telling me.”
Then she went into the bathroom.
“I’ll leave my number on the desk by the telephone,” I called after her. “You can give me a ring if you really think she’s serious about harming herself. It doesn’t matter what time.”
I buttoned my jacket and walked out of the bedroom. Momentarily I caught sight of Dinah sitting on the lavatory and, hearing the sound of her peeing, I hurried on through to the study.
“I don’t think she meant it,” said Dinah. “She says a lot of things she doesn’t mean.”
“We all do.”
There was a three-drawer wooden desk covered with carved animals and different-sized shotgun cartridges and rifle bullets that someone had stood on their ends like so many lethal lipsticks. I found a piece of paper and a pen and scribbled out my telephone number in large writing so that it wouldn’t be missed. Unlike me. And then I left.
I drove home and spent the rest of the day and half the night in my little workshop. While I worked I thought about Noreen and Max Reles and Dinah. Nobody called me on the phone. But there was nothing unusual about that.
HAVANA’S CHINESE QUARTER-the Barrio Chino-was the largest in Latin America, and since it was Chinese New Year the streets off Zanja and Cuchillo were decorated with paper lanterns and given over to open-air markets and lion-dance troupes. At the intersection of Amistad and Dragones was a gateway as big as the Forbidden City. Later that evening, it would be the
