Happy New Year, Herbie and other stories

The Tourists

The giant brown pods of the royal poincianas were motionless on the still hot air. Like huge, closed straight-razors, they hung lifelessly from the trees against a sky of baked blue enamel. In a few months they would bloom, but they hung in ugly limpness now in a Jamaica forsaken by the trade winds, an island aflame with tropical heat, persistent, relentless, as still as death itself.

The taxi wound its way down through the heat, the sun reflecting dizzily from its polished hood and top. The native driver honked his horn incessantly and pedestrians along the side of the road inched closer to the curb each time the horn sounded, balancing bundles on their heads, walking with the straight proud walk Michael had found absent in Nassau.

His wife sat beside him in the back of the taxi, both of them rendered mute by the intense heat. She wore a white blouse and white tapered slacks, a young blond woman, evenly tanned but still carrying on her face and in her eyes the lacquered look of the native New Yorker. The cab came down out of the hills, the bay on its right resplendently blue under the brilliant sun. Michael thought of asking the driver to stop for a moment so that he could take a picture of the curving bay. And then the moment passed, the idea seemed to require too much energy. He slouched on the back seat, squinting his eyes against the sunshine which drenched the interior of the cab, wondering why he was always forgetting his sunglasses back at the hotel. He was a tall, thin man with bright blue eyes, narrowed now in an angular face. He wore a white shirt open at the throat, and he was consciously aware of his lean good looks, imagining himself somehow as a white hunter in the heart of darkest Africa, a fantasy he knew to be absurd. And yet, not totally absurd. There was a primitive smell to the island and its people, a feeling that civilization was worn by the tropics as haphazardly as a badly made suit.

“I hate this town,” Diane said suddenly.

He turned to look at her. Or rather, his eyes shifted toward her. He did not move his head or change his position. “It’s not a bad town,” he said.

“It’s awful. I think we ought to go on to Haiti.”

“No. I can’t stand beggars.”

“There are beggars here, too.”

“Not like Haiti,” he said. “In Haiti, they’re all over the streets.”

“A beggar or two might be exciting.”

“No, thank you. That’s not my idea of a vacation.”

“What is your idea of a vacation?” she asked. “Never mind, don’t bother. I know. You want a rest.”

“Exactly.”

“We’ve been resting for two weeks. When do we take a rest from resting?”

“It’s not really that dull, Diane. Actually, this is a pretty interesting town. Plenty to buy here.”

“I’m not interested in the business structure of Montego Bay. And if another native urges me to buy a straw hat when any damn fool can see I’m already wearing one, I think I’ll scream.”

Michael laughed suddenly, a humorless laugh that rang emptily in the silent cab.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” she said. “I’m trying to tell you I’m bored.”

“You were bored in New York, too.”

“Yes, and that’s why we came down here, isn’t that right? For a change?”

“For a rest,” he corrected.

“To get away from everyone we know — and your work, isn’t that right?”

“I hate when you do that.”

“Do what, for God’s sake?”

“Repeat yourself.”

“Oh, I don’t care what you hate. We came down here to get away from all the pressures, and instead...”

“If there are any pressures here,” Michael said, “I’d like to know about them.”

“Boredom is a pressure.”

“Boredom, boredom! Has it ever occurred to you that it’s pretty boring to hear you talk about boredom all the time?”

“I’m sorry if I annoy you.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“It sounded like that to me.”

“All I said was... well, what I object to is the way you keep going on about the same things. Like your life-role, and your search for identity, and your meaning as a woman. Why don’t you just relax, Diane? The trouble with women today is...”

“I don’t want to hear your thesis on the mechanized kitchen again.”

He shrugged. “All right.”

“Because if you want to know the truth, you’re pretty damn boring yourself.”

“Me?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes, you. The Madison Avenue mastermind with his new accounts and his new slogans and his new campaigns and his sales-up-fifty-percent. I’ve never met anyone in my life who was so concerned with making money.”

“I didn’t realize,” he said with cold hauteur, “that providing for one’s wife and family was being overly concerned with...”

“There’s a difference between...”

“... money. I suppose I’d be better off if I were a native chopping sugar cane in the goddamn jungle and earning ten cents a week!”

“They don’t chop sugar cane in the jungle.”

“On the plantations then. Wherever the hell they do it. Maybe you’d enjoy that?”

“Maybe I would. It might be real, at least.”

“Oh, here we go on the fake existence theme again. The glitter of New York, the tinsel whirl of...”

“Don’t you ever understand anything I’m saying?” she asked angrily. “I hate it here! And, damnit, I’m catching a cold!”

“How can anyone catch a cold in the tropics?”

“I don’t know how. By contact with a germ, I would imagine. I’m catching one, that’s all.”

“It must be psychosomatic.”

“Maybe it is. Michael, for the love of God, let’s move on.”

“I like Jamaica,” he said flatly.

“This is the Parade, sir,” the driver interrupted gently. “Did you want to get out here, sir?”

“Yes, thank you, Andrews,” Michael said. “We’ll only be an hour or so.”

“I’ll wait for you in front of Issa’s, sir.”

“Very well,” Michael said. He opened the door and stepped into the sunshine. He held his hand out to Diane and she followed him onto the curb.

“Why did you say ‘Very well’?” she asked.

“What should I have said?”

“ ‘Very well’ sounds so British. You never say that in New York.”

“Well, this isn’t New York. This is the British West Indies.”

“That’s no reason for you to put on airs. The driver must be laughing himself silly.”

“He isn’t laughing at all. He’s thinking he’ll get three dollars for the ride and a two-dollar tip, that’s what he’s doing.”

“Not everyone thinks the way you do, Michael,” she said. “God, it’s hot. Can’t we get over in the shade?”

They crossed the street and began walking under the narrow awnings lining the narrow sidewalk. The natives rushed past, carrying bananas to the wharf, carrying shopping baskets, intent on their personal affairs, their clothes bright and gaudy. Bicycles flashed in the sunshine, an ancient bus creaked around the circle near the straw market, a nighttime sign warned DIP YOUR LIGHTS.

“What did you mean by that?” he asked.

“By what?”

“By everyone not thinking the way I do.”

“About money. Everyone doesn’t think it’s that important. The driver may be thinking about other things.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Michael, like his family, or his wife, or... or... even taking a vacation in New York one day.”

“He could never afford a vacation in New York.”

“In Kingston then.”

“He’d never be able to afford that, either.”

“Well, that doesn’t make him any less a man.”

“What is it, Diane? Does my earning power annoy you? Must I constantly compete with my own wife in addition to the daily...”

“You’ve told me about the Madison Avenue ratrace, thanks. Please spare me.”

“I’m awfully sorry, but that’s the way things are. If you think...”

“Then change the way things are! Before it’s too late!”

“I’ll go out and buy a machete, would that suit you? And we’ll live in a lovely corrugated tin hut. And you can do wood carving while I’m out chopping sugar cane. Would that satisfy your need for self-expression?”

“It’s not a joke!” she said, her voice suddenly loud on the sun-hushed street.

“All right, let’s end it, Diane,” he said softly.

“End what?”

“The argument,” He paused, puzzled. “What did you think I meant?”

“I don’t know.”

They stopped stock still in the center of the street.

“The argument,” he said.

“Yes. I heard you.”

“Well, what did you think I meant? All I meant was the argument.”

“Yes.”

“Well...” He shrugged. “Well, let’s end it, all right?”

“All right.”

He nodded and tried a tentative smile. Their eyes met and held for an instant.

“Would you like a drink?” he asked.

“No. It’s too early.”

“Well, would you like to get out of the sun? These awnings don’t help at all. I’m hot. Aren’t you, Diane?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Well, let’s get out of the sun, all right?” He shaded his eyes and looked up the street. “There’s a place.” He turned to her. “Antiques. Want to give it a try?”

“If you like.”

They walked up the street in silence. The building was on the opposite side of the road, its front painted a bright tropical green. The sign Michael had seen hung from a rusted wrought-iron support.

An arrow pointed to a narrow flight of steps on the side of the building. The wall at the top of the steps was painted a shocking pink. The green of the building and the pink of the wall blended like the stem and bloom of a wild tropical flower, merged to give an impression of lush savagery stained with brilliant sunshine. The steps rose to the pink wall in golden fury, seemed to collide with the wall and a second painted red arrow indicating the door of the shop. They climbed the steps slowly, she moving with unconscious, femininity in the form-fitting white tapered slacks, he holding her elbow and moving gracelessly beside her, his expensive camera dangling from a leather strap around his neck. As they climbed the steps, he could not resist adding, “A man has to make a living, Diane,” and then they reached the landing and entered the shop and were immediately blinded.

Slowly, their eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room.

Two windows opened on the street outside and twin shafts of sunlight pierced the gloom, dust motes tirelessly climbing them to the low ceiling. The walls were hung with clocks, and clocks peered into the gloom from behind the dust-covered fronts of ancient cases. A mesh cage was at one side of the shop, enclosing a table covered with the intricate wheels and springs of a disemboweled watch, a jeweler’s loupe, a miniature screwdriver, a pair of tweezers. Dust seemed to cover everything. Dust and heat permeated the shop, became the shop’s lifeblood. Dust and heat seeped into every crack and corner until the shop seemed to possess a secret pulsing sound, the sound of silence and gloom and heat and dust commingled.

The old man came from behind the mesh cage, dust-colored himself, a big man wearing a white shirt and pale-blue trousers which hung sloppily over a loose paunch. A yellow silk tie was knotted carelessly about his neck. He breathed heavily as he walked toward them, his eyes touching Diane’s face and then shifting slowly to Michael, who wiped sweat from his upper lip with a clean white handkerchief.

“Yes, sir?” the man said. He did not smile. His eyes were dark black in a dry face the color of dead ashes. His black hair, turning gray, clung wetly to his forehead. A laborious wheeze came from his thick lips when he spoke. “Yes, madam?”

“We’re just looking,” Michael said.

“For what, sir?”

“We’re not sure. We... uh...”

Michael hesitated. He had not expected this. He had expected a neat, precise refuge from the sun, a tourist shop with a clean tourist façade and not this cluttered den of stronger heat and hanging dust.

“Some clocks, perhaps, sir? Or some coins? Or some jewelry for the lady?”

For a moment, an awkwardness crowded into the shop. Michael knew instantly that they’d made a mistake, and he could see that Diane wanted nothing more than to get out of this small dark cave. Moreover, he felt the proprietor was fully aware of their discomfort and would be happy to see them leave. But none of them wished to appear rude, and so they went through the shallow pantomime of buyer and seller, no one truly intending to buy or to sell, the awkwardness not one of intent or purpose but simply one of ineptitude, a stuttering bow to the absurd demands of civilization.

“My name is Barker,” the fat man said. “This is my shop.”

He extended his hand clumsily to Michael, and Michael gave it an unenthusiastic shake and then dropped it. Barker turned to Diane and extended his hand again. She took it cautiously, as if she were picking up a loathsome object preparatory to dropping it in the trash basket. Barker held her hand and brought it closer to his face as if he were about to kiss it in the Continental manner. Then, still holding it, he examined the slender fingers and said, “A ring for madam, perhaps?”

“No, I don’t want a ring,” Diane said briskly, pulling back her hand. “We’d better go, Michael. Our driver is waiting.”

Barker smiled palely. “In Jamaica, madam,” he said, “all things can wait.”

“Rings included,” Diane said coldly. “Let’s go, Michael.”

Barker stepped into their path unobtrusively, almost gliding over the dusty floor, so that his interference did not seem at all like a deliberate one, his eyes never leaving Diane.

“I have some beautiful things to show,” he said. “Wait.”

“I think...” Michael started.

“Wait,” Barker said.

He went behind the counter. Michael glanced at Diane and gave a slight shrug of his shoulders. Her eyes met his coldly, more meaning in them than he could read. He frowned. Behind the counter, Barker wheezingly knelt and then came into view again, his ash-dust face appearing above the countertop, his eyes flicking again to Diane. It seemed hotter in the shop now. Barker’s shirt stuck to his flaccid body, giant blots of perspiration spreading from his armpits across his chest.

“Here,” he said. “Look at this, sir.”

He opened the case in his hands. A dueling pistol rested on black velvet, a handsomely wrought gun with silver filigree decorating the handle and twined around the barrel.

“That is a very old gun, sir,” Barker said. “Look at it, sir. It is beautiful, is it not, sir?”

“Yes, it is,” Michael said honestly, leaning closer to the pistol.

“You may hold it, sir, if you like,” Barker said. He handed the pistol in its case to Michael and then turned again to Diane. “That is an interesting watch you’re wearing, madam,” he said, and he glanced at the gold watch that hung from a chain about her throat, a small gold circle resting against the white pillow of her blouse.

“May I?” he asked, and before she could answer he reached for the watch, his thick fingers swooping toward it as gracefully and relentlessly as the vultures they had seen in Port Antonio yesterday dropping swiftly out of the sky. Delicately, his fingers plucked the watch from where it rested on her blouse. He did not touch her and yet the careful, exaggerated delicacy of his fingers as they plucked the watch from its nesting place was somehow a violation. Somehow the lack of physical contact implied a greater, more intimate, contact. He held the watch on his thick palm and glanced at Michael who was examining the silver-filigreed pistol.

“This is an old watch, madam?” he asked Diane.

“No. It’s new.”

“Oh, but not so new, madam.”

“I bought it a year ago.”

“It has the appearance of an old watch, madam.”

“It’s not.”

“That is a shame, madam,” Barker said. “For the old things have greater value.”

“Only to collectors of antiques,” Diane said frostily, and Michael looked up from the pistol in his hands, startled by the unusual sound of his wife’s voice.

“How much is this worth?” he asked Barker.

Gently Barker allowed the pendant watch to return to its resting place. He turned wheezily to Michael, sighed, and said, “The pistol costs two hundred pounds, sir.”

“It’s beautiful,” Michael said.

A thin smile crossed Barker’s face. “But more than you care to spend, sir?”

“Oh, I wasn’t considering buying it,” Michael answered. “I was just curious.” He wiped his lip again, and handed the pistol case back to Barker. “Come on, Diane. We’d better go.”

“Wait,” Barker said, and he held up a finger and looked again at Diane, and this time Michael saw the quick motion of his eyes and thought, Why, the old man is flirting with my wife! The thought was somewhat amusing and also somewhat irritating, a curious mixture that somehow strengthened Michael’s desire to leave the shop at once.

“We really must go,” he said.

“Just one moment, sir,” Barker said. “I have something else to show you.”

Michael turned to Diane. She rested against the dusty counter leaning on one elbow, the pendant watch hanging, a negative silhouette in gleaming white, a graceful curving silhouette from the tilt of her blond head to the long lissome length of her legs in the tight tapered slacks. An odd smile was on her mouth, a smile Michael had never seen there before. She did not move from the counter. She kept staring at the old man as he went to one of the ancient cases and pulled open a heavy drawer and then moved toward them with a large carved wooden chest in his hands.

“Let’s go, Diane,” Michael said. She seemed not to hear him. “Diane,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“No,” she answered. “Let’s see this.”

Their eyes met for an instant, and he thought frozenly, She’s enjoying the old man’s attention, but he knew this was ridiculous — and yet there was the smile on his wife’s face. He wiped again at his lip with his handkerchief. In the street outside, he could hear the rushed babble of native speech and honking horns and sandaled feet beating the scorched pavement. Barker approached, and the ticking of all the clocks in the shop suddenly registered on Michael’s ears, a sound that had surely been there all along but which he heard only now, the ticking of hundreds of clocks, and yet a ticking that was timeless, a ticking that was somehow not at all connected with the passage of time but that seemed instead to nullify it and render it meaningless.

“Let’s go,” he said sharply, but Barker was standing in their path again, his obese body wedged into the small entrance area between the counters. He held out the wooden chest, smiled wanly at Diane, and said, “Would madam care to open it?”

“Thank you,” Diane said, and this time there was an unmistakable lilt to her voice, and she arched one eyebrow coquettishly. She smiled at the old man, a lazy, mysterious smile, and then she slowly lifted the lid of the chest.

The beam of sunlight from the open window caught the contents of the box, magnified the hundreds of thick gold coins which were heaped inside. The sight of the coins was startling to Michael. He had held no preconceived notion of what the chest contained and now that it was opened, splashed with sunlight, each coin glittering with a thick circular life of its own, he caught his breath in wonder and surprise and unconsciously moved closer to the heavy chest as Barker set it down on the countertop.

“Doubloons,” Barker said. “Spanish doubloons. They are worth a fortune, sir.” His eyes met Diane’s over the open chest. There was a fine sheen of sweat on Diane’s forehead and her upper lip. The old man’s mouth was twitching slightly. His hand on the open lid of the chest had begun to tremble.

“Would you like to examine one, sir?” he asked, but he did not deliver the words to Michael. He spoke to Diane, and his eyes held hers in a steady gaze now, and she smiled back at him in a frozen, sleepy-eyed way, her eyes meeting the old man’s over the open box like a challenge. Michael picked up one of the coins. It was heavy and thick, inscribed with Spanish lettering and the name of a monarch and a seventeenth-century date. The chest was full of them. He wanted suddenly to pick them up and let them trickle through his open fingers.

“Would you like that coin, sir?” Barker said. There was a tremor in the old man’s voice now.

“It’s very beautiful,” Michael whispered.

“It is very very beautiful, sir. Would you like it, sir?”

“How... how much is it?”

“There is a price, sir.”

“What’s the price?”

“What do you think the coin is worth, sir?”

“I have no idea.”

“It is worth a great deal, sir.”

“Well, how much?”

“Make me an offer, sir.”

“I told you,” Michael said, annoyed, “I don’t know how much it’s worth.” He had become irritated suddenly and irrationally, irritated by the old man’s trembling hand and by the frozen smile on Diane’s face, and by the dust and suffocating heat of the shop, and the rush of noise outside, and irritated too by the sight of the gleaming coins in the old wooden chest.

“I will accept a reasonable offer, sir,” Barker persisted.

“I told you I...”

“For two coins then, sir? Would you make an offer for two of the coins?”

“If I don’t know what one is worth, how can I...”

“Three, sir? Will you barter for three?”

He looked into the old man’s eyes, and he saw what was there, and the old man’s meaning cracked sharply into his mind, and he felt a sudden chill.

“A dozen coins, sir?” Barker said, and he leaned closer, and his eyes turned to Diane, coveted her in one swift glance, and somehow assured her, assured her of something certain that was about to happen, and Michael realized with a shock that he wanted those coins, he desired those coins in the wooden chest, he wanted them desperately, and it was then that his eyes narrowed and the dust in the shop took on a new and different smell.

“Two dozen coins, sir? I am willing to trade. I am willing to barter.”

Michael held the single doubloon in his hand and he looked at the glittering heap of coins and felt suddenly weak. He began shaking his head, the ticking of the clocks loud in his ears, the dust motes recklessly climbing the golden shafts, Diane blond and smiling her cold fixed evil smile, the old man leaning forward and wheezing heavily, anxiously awaiting his answer, evil, and the stench of evil in his own nostrils, suffocating him. He reached for Diane’s arm blindly, and he dropped the doubloon onto the gleaming pile of coins and shoved past the old man. Barker reached out as if to stop them, and his thick fingers traveled the length of Diane’s naked arm caressingly as she rushed past, recoiling from his touch, and went swiftly down the steps into the street, Michael following behind her, the expensive camera swinging from his neck.

They stopped on the sidewalk. The sun was still intense. Behind them the steps rose to the ugly pink wall and the beckoning red arrow. His hand shook as he fumbled for the cigarettes in the pocket of his white shirt.

“He recognized us,” Diane whispered, and suddenly she began to shiver.

“Yes,” Michael answered quickly, taking her elbow. His eyes would not meet hers. “He knew we were tourists.”