'May I?' He laid a palm on her brow. These excuses to touch, how much longer did he have? Her brown confident eyes looked up at him. He reached for her wrist and proceeded to take her pulse. Her lips were slightly parted and he saw the pink tip of her tongue moisten her front teeth with saliva. Her hair was thick, dry, no shine, almost matt. Her nightgown was pale blue cotton. Her bed jacket was quilted in small puffy diamonds, badged with embroidered crimson crosses. He had to speak.
'Henry James,' he said, pointing to the book. It was Portrait of a Lady. 'I've only read Daisy Miller.' He let go her wrist.
'I met him once, you know,' she said. 'In Switzerland, in Geneva a few years ago. I was introduced by a friend of mine who knew him well. Constance Fenimore Woolson. She was an extraordinary person, wonderful. Do you know her novels?'
'No, I'm afraid not. Out here we fall behind.'
'I'll lend you them.'
'Thank you, I'd like that.' The plan grew, flourished, in an instant. An exchange of reading matter. Annaliese was always reading novels, the house was full of them. 'Were you and Colonel Sieverance travelling through Europe?'
'No, I wasn't with him. He'd – ' She was about to go on, and say something a little uncomplimentary, he guessed, but she stopped herself. 'We weren't married then. No, I was with a friend and her aunt.' She smiled at him, a little mockingly, he thought. 'Colonel Sieverance and I have only been married four years. We can do some things on our own, us women, you know. Some of us are even capable of buying a steamer ticket, taking a ship across the ocean and travelling in foreign lands.'
'You mustn't make fun of me, Mrs Sieverance,' he said. 'I'm only a simple surgeon.'
Her shout of laughter both startled and thrilled him. It was a mock-indignant blare, unselfconscious and raucous. He heard it ring in his ears like a hosannah.
He grinned back happily at her. Like a loon. Like a jolly galoot.
She frowned suddenly. 'You mustn't do that to me, Dr Carriscant. I felt that.' She reached her hand beneath the sheet to touch her side and twisted round to ease her position. Carriscant thought he detected, in the way her bed jacket moved, the roll of her breasts beneath her nightgown as she shifted from one hip to another. He felt an utter helplessness suffuse him, in the face of his feelings for this woman, a massive impotency.
'Simple surgeon, indeed,' she said, wagging her finger at him. 'I won't accept that for one minute. Not for one minute.'
At that moment the nurse returned and he said he had to leave.
'That novelist you mentioned. What was her name?'
'Fenimore Woolson. I'll get my husband to bring the book.'
'No,' he said too quickly. 'I mean, ah, no hurry. I'll have to come to your home occasionally once you've moved back. I can pick it up any time.'
He paused, suddenly fearful: this was the wrong note, exactly the wrong note upon which to leave. Too familiar, too full of assumptions. He had to think of something else and, as usually happens at moments of pressure, his brain came up with banalities.
'Is there anything you would like?' he said. 'Anything special I can fetch for you. I don't know, I -'
'Well, there is, you know,' she said. 'I asked Jepson but he had no luck. I have this craving for sugared violets. Crystallised violets, you know? A complete craving. They're my favourite thing. I brought pounds with me but I've finished them all. I sit here reading and want to dip my fingers into a bowl of sugared violets from time to time. I find my hand drifting out into mid-air. Do you think you could find them in Manila?' She looked at him slyly, teasing. 'I'd be even more in your debt, Dr Carriscant.'
'I'll do my – ' He cleared his throat, suddenly nervous, suddenly moved. The air seemed lambent with potential, all at once. 'I'll see what I can do.' He managed a fast smile and then was gone.
TEA WITH PATON BOBBY
The Government Ice Plant was situated on the south bank of the Pasig next to the Colgante suspension bridge. Carriscant watched three huge misty blocks of ice being winched out of the plant's store and lowered on to the creaking boards of a caraboa wagon. The placid buffaloes stood immobile in their traces, blinking away the fitful flies as loops of green cud dropped from their slowly working jaws.
As the third block was lowered on to the boards Carriscant repeated his instructions. 'You have twenty minutes. We won't pay if even ten per cent has melted.' The caraboa were enthusiastically flogged into action and the wagon slowly trundled off towards the Parian gate into the walled city.
He heard his name being called and turned to see who it was. Paton Bobby leaned out of a victoria and beckoned him over.
'I was looking for you at the hospital,' he said. 'They told me you were buying ice. Still keeping them fresh, huh?'
'Remarkably. If we change the top layer of ice, a foot or so, every three days, it seems to last very well. In fact the bottom of the case is solid impacted ice. Seems to melt and, as it trickles down, refreezes.'
'Great. So we don't need to worry about the refrigeration plant.'
There was a new refrigeration plant in San Miguel, recently built beside the nurses' quarters. Carriscant had suggested that they use this facility as a place where the corpses could be stored indefinitely, but Wieland had officially turned the request down on the grounds of it being a health hazard. Now it made no difference: there was no sign of decomposition, the bodies were almost completely frozen.
'I must admit Cruz's trunks do their job well. And at least we know where they are, and who can get to them.'
'Exactly,' Bobby said. 'It was a good idea. Smart.'
'Any developments?'
'Maybe… You got half an hour? Can I offer you some tea or coffee? We can go to the American Club.'
The American Club was on the Calle de San Augustin in Intramuros, not far from the hospital. It was an old rambling house with some of the interior walls on the first floor removed to create larger public rooms, notably a dining room and a spacious salon with punkah fans and rattan furniture and month-old copies of American newspapers. The windows had not been glazed as was the usual American habit and the old translucent kapis shells had been kept, producing a filtered soft light that left the corners of the room dark and shadowy. A Chinese waiter brought them American coffee and a plate of small sweetened rice cakes. The club was almost empty at this hour: Carriscant saw a naval officer sleeping in a corner on a steamer chair, a group of businessmen in white drill suits playing poker, the smoke from their cigars barely stirred by the slow sway of the punkah, and from a room at the rear of the house, overlooking the azotea, came the dull ivory click of cannoning billiard balls.
Bobby drank his coffee, ate three rice cakes and filled a small corn-cob pipe with tobacco from a soft leather pouch. The pipe had a tiny bowl, so small it seemed almost as if it were designed for an apprentice smoker. Bobby puffed it quickly alight and plumed smoke sideways from the corner of his mouth.
'You do grow great tobacco here, I will grant you that.'
'Worth all the effort of colonisation?'
'Oh, I don't know about these things. I just appreciate a good smoke.'
They talked a bit about Taft, about the rumours that Roosevelt had offered him a post in the Supreme Court.
'Think he'll go?' Carriscant asked.
'He's a lawyer. Supreme Court judge has got to be the top of that particular tree.'
They nattered on, Carriscant waiting patiently. He knew Bobby well enough by now to understand that this display of sociability was not disinterested. And soon enough Bobby leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
'Wieland says you were in Sampaloc. In a creep-joint.'
'Yes.' This did not surprise him. Wieland was unlikely to keep that information to himself, especially now, but what was it to Bobby? 'Wieland was drunk, by the way,' Carriscant threw in for good measure. 'Very.'
'You go there often? Not that I care,' he added quickly. 'I whore myself from time to time.'
