Savage Bride

Chapter Three

Two a.m. The ship lay at rest now, anchored in Havana harbor. The stateroom was lighted, but no one was in it. The stewardess had turned back the covers of the double berth, awaiting occupancy for the night. On one side lay a pale pink nightdress, on the other a pair of pajamas.

Outside somewhere there were the lights of Havana, sprinkled on the black surface of the harbor like nuclei of colored confetti soaking in the stagnant water. Morro Castle was like a stubby stick of gray chalk poised against the blackboard of the sky. A blue diamond near its tip twinkled, then dimmed, twinkled, then dimmed; over and over.

A key turned in the stateroom door. He came in backward, pushing the door inward with his shoulder. He was holding, her in his arms, like a groom is supposed to carry his new-made bride. He was in white evening jacket, she was in black lace.

He was smiling. She wasn’t. Her eyes were downcast, as if there were fear hiding in them and she didn’t want him to see it. She even held her head a little averted.

He backed the door closed with his heel. He released her, and she dropped to her own feet, the black lace settling about her like a puff of black smoke.

“What a town!” he exhaled. “You don’t need alcohol in you: drinks here — the town itself supplies the lift.” He yanked out his tieknot.

She was very quiet; she didn’t say anything. He glanced over at her, as if for the first time noticing that her mood didn’t match his. The black evening gown fell to the floor. He saw her hang her head a little.

“Tired?” he asked gently.

She shook her head, but without lifting it. It was so low he could see the part in her hair now, the gardenia she wore at the back. She sat down, pulled off one of her dancing shoes. Then the other.

He wasn’t smiling now any more, himself. He was thoughtful, downcast. “I know,” he told her quietly. “You’re frightened. Still frightened.”

She inclined her head still more abjectly forward, but didn’t answer.

“But we were married Tuesday. This is Friday. How long...?” Then he didn’t finish it. He shrugged his coat back on again. He went over toward the door.

While his back was turned, there was the silken sound of her slip, and the pink nightdress was suddenly whisked from the bed, spilled itself over her, like some kind of rosy foam.

“Do you want me to go outside for a while again?” he asked her. “Like the other nights?”

She wouldn’t answer, or she couldn’t.

“What is it? Don’t you love me?”

She raised her head suddenly. She forced herself to. He could see that she was trembling a little, although the night temperature ashore in Havana was eighty degrees. “I love you, but I’m afraid of love. I’m both at once,” she said in a low, muffled voice at last.

“Then why did you marry me? You knew what marriage was, didn’t you?”

“All day in the sunshine, I’m not afraid. You are my love. Then the night comes, a drum beats low, deep in my heart...”

“What is this fear? Love doesn’t hurt you.” He came back toward her and crouched down beside her, taking her hands in his.

“Doesn’t it?” she quavered uncertainly, like a child asking something of a teacher in school. “Then what — what does it do?”

He groped for words. “You can’t be told of it. You can only — live it.”

Her eyes were like two dark haunted pools.

“Where were you,” he asked her sadly, “that you never learned about love?”

“In that house there, where you found me.”

“Won’t you trust me?” he pleaded gently. “Can’t you look at me and see that I’d never hurt you? Won’t you — take a chance with me?”

She was still trembling. Slowly her arms opened. She drew them back in a gesture of passivity, of acceptance. A switch snapped, and the stateroom became a square of perfect darkness, a pall, an undeveloped photographic plate...

Then later, in the nothingness, her voice spoke, low, troubled.

“Have I displeased you?”

There was no answer.

The switch ticked once more, the light went on, and they were far apart. It was her hand that had touched it. He was across at the other side of the stateroom from her, standing near the dresser, his back turned her way. Sweat traced an erratic satiny track here and there down his face. A forelock of hair overhung his forehead like a scythe.

“Why do you leave me this way?”

On the floor, petals of a disintegrated gardenia had fallen, as though a storm had buffeted it. The gardenia that had been in her hair. One petal was clinging to his shoulder. He raised his hand and flicked it off impatiently.

“Please tell me. Please. What have I done?”

He didn’t answer. The hand that took up one of the black-filled Cuban cigarettes wasn’t steady.

“What is it, what did I do?”

His voice was husky. “Nothing. Don’t notice me. I had too many drinks ashore, maybe, at Sans Souci and Bajo la Luna.”

“You didn’t drink at all. I watched you. Only coffee.”

He sensed by way of the mirror, without seeing it, her intention to move, to join him. His arm gestured her back. “Stay there. For just a minute. For just a minute, let me stand away from you.”

“Won’t you tell me?”

“First I frightened you; now your passion has frightened me.” He opened one of the drawers, dredged up a bottle of straw-colored Cuban rum. He passed the back of his hand across his forehead, as if trying to erase or stifle some emotion churning within it. “It was like holding onto something that — that suddenly becomes a tigress in your arms. I don’t know how to say it. Not just a girl. Some jungle thing. That’s why I jumped away like that. Do you — know what you did just now?”

He brought his other hand out before him, eyed it, red threads of blood snaking across its back. He took a pocket handkerchief, saturated it in rum from the bottle, held it to it. And then to his cheek, where there was an angry red diagonal traced. Then finally he tied it around his hand.

“I couldn’t tell if it was love or hate. Only, it was too fierce for me.”

“It wasn’t hate. You named it for me. You named it love. So love is what it was.”

“To kiss is not to bite. To claw is not to caress. It was like a panther tearing me to pieces. Those strange words — what were they? They weren’t words at all. They weren’t English.”

“I didn’t know. I didn’t hear them.”

“You spoke them.”

Her voice was a whisper, scarcely heard. Her extended arms guided it toward him. “You said it was love. Come back to where it is. If it is love, then it is here inside my arms.”

His bandaged hand moved. With it he poured himself a drink. A great big fat one. He drank it down to the bottom without a hitch.