The Cannibal Heart

8

Slowly the pages were being covered with Mrs. Wakefield’s untidy printing.

Contents of Dining Room: one bleached- mahogany dining set, table, buffet, eight chairs, value about $800? Two pairs damask drapes and rods — value perhaps $200, but this may be too high. One 12x18 Sultana-land rug, value, I’ve had it for years and it’s worn in spots. Couldn’t be worth more than $400, not that perhaps...

She couldn’t write down even the contents of a room without stamping each article with her personality.

“For the rug, five hundred,” Mr. Roma said. “And you must not write little notes like that. It isn’t businesslike.”

“How else can I show that I don’t know the actual value?”

“Put little question marks. For example, if you are quite uncertain put one question mark, and if you are very uncertain put two or three question marks.”

“That doesn’t sound so businesslike either.”

“Still, it is more so, eh?”

“I guess.”

“Now. Six pictures.”

“They’re only reproductions, forty dollars at the most.”

“Fifty,” he said briskly. “Consider the frames. Myself, I would demand a hundred, considering the frames.”

Mrs. Wakefield pushed her hair back off her forehead and printed: $50???

“Two silver candelabra,” Mr. Roma said. “You had a bad dream last night?”

“Yes.”

“Like in the old days.”

“Did I... make a noise?”

“Mr. Banner heard you. He thought it was a sea lion.”

“A sea lion.” She looked up at him with a queer little laugh. “That’s rather funny. I hope I didn’t disturb anyone else.”

“I didn’t hear you myself, but I remembered your old nightmares.”

“I woke up crying. It’s a strange thing to wake up, thinking you’ve been sleeping soundly, and find tears still wet on your cheeks and your throat aching... They aren’t nightmares,” she added quietly. “They are things that really happened. I live them over again.”

“They are not out of focus?”

“Sometimes the faces are distorted, and the house, when I see it in a dream, looks different, very high and narrow like a witch’s castle; but the things that happen are real. They are worse than nightmares, more lasting and terrifying.”

She picked up the pencil again and printed: two silver candelabra. “They were a wedding present, I haven’t any idea how much they’re worth, or even whether they’re solid silver.”

He tested their weight, frowning in concentration. “They must be solid silver. Three hundred dollars at least, eh?”

“Perhaps.”

“One silver coffee set and tray. You didn’t tell me that Billy was drowned.”

“Didn’t I? I thought I had.”

“No. No, you didn’t.”

“It’s no secret. It was in some of the papers.”

“How did he drown?”

“It was when we were coming back from Manzanilla. He fell off the — over the railing. There’s no use talking about it. It’s finished.”

“But you...”

“I won’t talk about it.”

“You talk about things to yourself when you’re dreaming,” Mr. Roma said. “That is worse.”

She said bitterly, “At least if I talk to myself it won’t go any further.”

“But it does. You cry in the night, and people will ask, why? What has this woman got on her mind? What are her sad secrets?”

“Oh, stop it!” She flung the pencil across the table. He stooped immediately and picked it up; the gesture seemed deliberately and cynically servile.

“No secrets,” she said. “There’s simply nothing more to tell you. He was playing on deck. It was very hot, and I left him for a minute to get him a glass of water from the cooler. When I came back he had fallen overboard. No one saw it happen, no one heard him cry out, nothing. It was as if he never existed.”

“I am sorry,” Mr. Roma said. He felt questions stirring in the back of his mind, but they weren’t ready yet to be put into words.

“I looked for him all over the ship before I could bring myself to believe he’d fallen overboard. By the time the ship had turned and made a search it was too late.”

“You should have told me this yesterday.”

“Why? What difference does it make now?”

“It makes me think you were planning not to tell me at all.”

“What nonsense!” She smiled with sudden candor. “You’re becoming very fanciful, Carl.”

She had never called him anything but Mr. Roma, and the use of his first name seemed like a warning to him: Step back, Carl, where you belong. We are old friends but the terms of the friendship have always been set by me.

It was as if she was reminding him that times had changed; she didn’t live there anymore and they no longer had that mutual dependence that exists, apart from class or race, among people living together in a lonely place.

He gave her back the pencil. “One set of Spode china,” he said.

“It doesn’t work out, this verbal sharing of burdens. Do you feel any better now that you know about Billy? Do I feel any better for having told you? It doesn’t work out,” she repeated. “There are some pieces missing from the Spode, aren’t there?”

“Two cups and the cream pitcher.”

“I... let’s leave this for a while. I can’t do any more right now.”

She got up and went to the window, her arms folded across her breasts. “You’re like a child in some ways, Mr. Roma. Things look either black or white to you. It’s all very simple, not having to classify the other shades in the color chart. Like a child,” she said again. “If you like people you must approve of everything they do, they must be perfect. I feel that you’re censuring me because I went to get Billy a glass of water.”

“No, I am puzzled.”

There was a long silence before she turned from the window and spoke again. “The tide’s going out. It will be a good time to find Jessie a starfish.”

“She is all ready and waiting on the beach. Luisa is with her.” With an air of deliberation, he said, “The necklace you gave Luisa is very pretty. Very expensive.”

“I meant to bring her something and I forgot,” Mrs. Wakefield said coolly. “So I gave her the necklace.”

“What is Luisa to do in return?”

“Not a thing.”

“I must ask her to give it back to you.”

“Why?”

He looked carefully down at the floor as if he expected to find an answer written there less blurred and elusive than the one in his mind. “Well, it is too expensive a gift for a young girl, for one thing.”

“But it’s my money. If I choose to give it away in the form of a necklace...”

“It is wrong,” Mr. Roma said. “I feel inside that it is wrong.”

“You’re getting as full of hunches and superstitions as Carmelita.”

The words written on the floor were becoming clearer. “Luisa might think that the necklace is a payment of some kind.”

“Then she’s very silly. There’s nothing I’d want to buy from her. I told her — I merely asked her to be a little discreet about what she said to the Banners. It’s none of their business, about John and Billy. It might actually upset them,” she said earnestly. “You see? It’s for everybody’s good, really.”

“I see.”

“It would be tragic for poor Luisa to have to give the necklace back now. She’s crazy about it.”

The victory was hers. He could force Luisa to return the necklace, but he knew that the necklace itself was no longer important; the real issue was the power Mrs. Wakefield had given to Luisa. By urging her to be discreet she had put into her hands the weapon of indiscretion. Luisa’s power would only be reinforced and sharpened by resentment over the loss of the necklace.

“I will not ask her to give it back,” he said.

“I’m glad you’ve seen it my way.”

“I don’t see it your way, Mrs. Wakefield. I know there is nothing to be done, that is all.”

She went out of the room without answering. A few minutes later he saw her crossing the lawn, wearing a terry cloth robe over her bathing suit and carrying a face glass and a pair of rubber swim fins. Before she turned onto the path he had a sudden glimpse of her face; she looked as if she was going to retch.

She has courage, he thought, to go into the sea again.

Jessie was lying on her stomach on the big rock gazing down into a tide pool, absorbed in the strange tiny world uncovered by the ebbing tide. In this world anything was possible. A queen fairy was curled up asleep on a pebble, and a castle grew upside down in a forest of flowers. When she leaned way over to touch one of the flowers with her finger it squeezed itself shut till it looked like a brown stone. These fierce flowers had a wonderful name — Jessie called them Sea Enemies, and sometimes at night when she was compelled to frighten herself in order to stay awake longer, she pictured the Enemies waiting very quietly in the pool to eat her arm off.

“Hello,” Mrs. Wakefield said.

Jessie rolled over on her back and sat up. “Hello.”

“I thought Luisa was down here watching you.”

“She went away. We had a fight. Not really a fight, though. I didn’t scratch or bite her,” Jessie said virtuously. “Or pinch.”

“I couldn’t imagine you pinching anyone.”

“I often have. But I think I’m going to give it up from now on.”

“Here. I’ll lift you down.”

“No, thank you.” She slid off the rock backwards and landed in the sand with a neat somersault. The exhibition cost her several new scratches on her arms and legs, but it was worth it to see the surprised admiration on Mrs. Wakefield’s face. “I looked where you told me but I didn’t find any starfish. I found a crab and put him inside my bathing suit but he tickled too much. I abandoned him.”

“We’ll find a starfish, don’t worry.”

Mrs. Wakefield took off her robe and tied her hair back with a ribbon. “I haven’t been swimming for a long time.”

“How long?”

“Over a year.”

“Are you scared you’ve forgot how?”

“No.”

“You look scared.”

“Do I?” Mrs. Wakefield said brightly. “I’m not, though. I know this part of the sea well. It’s like my garden, you see? I know what is planted here, and where each rock is, and the best paths to swim along. And, as in a garden, there are things to be avoided. On a calm day like this the stingrays like to browse around in the shallow water. We must be careful to let them know we’re coming so they’ll go away.”

“I could shout.”

“There’s a better way.”

Mrs. Wakefield took Jessie’s hand and together they waded slowly into the cold water, stirring it up carefully before each step. The waves slapped Jessie’s stomach and stung the scratches on her legs, but she was too excited to feel the hurt.

They moved as cautiously as thieves into Mrs. Wakefield’s dark garden where all the flowers were alive and the vines of kelp twined around Jessie’s legs like ivy seeking a wall to grow on.

Mrs. Wakefield lifted a strand of kelp and put it around Jessie’s neck. “See now, you have a lei.”

The leaves of the kelp felt cold and oily against her skin. She said, shivering, “I’d just as soon not have.”

“All right.” Mrs. Wakefield threw the kelp back into the water and it drifted slowly away. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Jessie.”

“I’m not afraid of anything!” Letting go of Mrs. Wakefield’s hand she flung herself forward into the water, shrieking, “I can swim! Look, I can swim!”

The next wave caught her and she rolled into shore like a log.

Mrs. Wakefield stood motionless, rooted in her garden. It was as if time, and herself, had been paralyzed, and she must stand forever watching a scene that she had watched before, hearing the same sounds. The water crashed against her thighs, a gull cried, childlike, the sun was bright as a devil’s eye. From its ledge the black flash of a cormorant swooped out to sea. Jessie sat up, gasping and rubbing her eyes. Mrs. Wakefield looked up at the house which peered slyly over the cliff like a knowing face.