Hemingway's Notebook (17 page)

Celezon thought he saw them in a flash of lightning running across the darkened courtyard of the palace. There was the woman Colonel Ready had taken. There was Harry Francis. He smiled at the comical figure of Harry Francis running so heavily in the rain, in the darkness.

And there was a third man he thought he had seen before. In cold Europe. So. He had come. Colonel Ready was certain he would come, was certain he would use him. As he had used Celezon. Colonel Ready was like Fate. He knew everything that would happen, even as those who thought they were free of Ready made it happen the way that the colonel wanted it.

There was another stroke of lightning splitting the raindrops, parting them as a beaded curtain in one of the cafés in Madeleine. But they were gone.

Celezon stood heavily at the tall window, in his uniform, his back to the darkened room. All the lights were gone, there had been shots fired in the cellars.

And in the hills above Madeleine, Colonel Ready’s army was destroying the world.

“Escape,” said the soft voice behind him.

Celezon turned and he was still smiling.

Yvette came next to him. She was clothed in a white garment, her skin was very white, very soft, and damp with the heat of the evening in the torrent.

“Escape,” Yvette Pascon said to him and she clung to him.

“There is no escape, dear one.” Every intimacy had been between them, in words and touch.

“No. You must not. We must escape him and if not us, you must. You have the people.”

“I have nothing, dear one.”

No one would believe Celezon spoke so softly.

But she was his sister. She was his sibling in the voodoo he had shown her as a neglected child. It was true what they said of her in the hills: She slept with her brother. But not Claude-Eduard who was impotent, who was a fool, who was propped by Yvette and Celezon until the day the Americans had come with money and power and placed Colonel Ready in charge of the army of St. Michel. Money corrupted his corrupt brain and corrupted the simple of St. Michel until they did not understand that Ready was a demon who had to be exorcised by fire, by blood on fire, by water on blood on fire. He had slept with her, loved her as a husband would love his wife, but she was his sister. She was of the voodoo, she understood, even imperfectly because her blood was the blood of the whites. But she tried to understand and it was enough for Celezon.

The nuns had been very bad for the people in the hills.

The nuns were holy people but they did not dress as priestesses. They did not believe in the voodoo. Worse, they did not respect it. They made magic from syringes and crippled the faith of those in the hills.

The archbishop respected the voodoo.

He understood there was a religion for the people of the lower world in the town and the stronger religion for the people of the upper world. The archbishop was a wise man to respect the voodoo. He ate well in a strange land and had no enemies.

If the nuns were killed, Celezon had thought that day when he had ordered the killing, it would cause harm to Colonel Ready who was the enemy of the religion of the hills. And Yvette Pascon’s enemy.

And Celezon’s enemy.

“What will you do then?” She hissed like the serpent. She stood behind him and removed her gown and was naked. She smelled of the ripe odors of love. He had only left her a little while ago.

“If I go, they may kill me in the hills. I am the commander of the
gendarmes noirs
.”

“You are a priest.”

“And what is Colonel Ready?” asked Celezon thoughtfully, staring at her nakedness.

She held him then, pressing her naked body against him.

“Death,” she said.

“Ready killed the nuns. Killed my cousin. He’s killing everyone now.”

Calabrese tried to make the words sound calm but the desperation came in his syntax. He held the pistol to the head of the operator in the St. Michel Exchange. It was the only line open to the outside.

Anthony Calabrese pressed his ear to the telephone. He waited for some voice at the other end and for a long time, there was only static on the line.

He was sweating and his gold chain was glued by sweat to his chest. Everyone was terribly afraid: the operator who saw the pistol in his hand, the security guard who was face down on the floor with his hands behind his neck, Anthony Calabrese. They had left him out too long.

“What about Rita Macklin?”

“Dead, I think.”

There was another pause.

“Christ, I got to get out. Everything is blown. Ready is mad.”

“Yes,” said Hanley. His voice was cool over the lines. “Mad, I suppose. It’s a dramatic term but it might be right.”

“He killed the nuns.”

“As you said.”

“My cousin.”

“And the American agent.”

“Whatever his name is. Dead. In the hills. Manet killed him.”

“All right.” Another pause. The line crackled. The sky was filled with lightning. “Come out.”

“Come out? Come out?” His voice was rising. “Come in and get me, copper. I can’t get out. How the hell do I get out? I’m trapped in here. He doesn’t need me, doesn’t need Weisman, doesn’t need anyone. End game. He beat everyone.”

“Come out,” said Hanley in a quiet voice. “You must have thought of ways of escape.”

“I didn’t think of this happening. I thought… something… was supposed to be pulled back.”

“We never interfered with Langley’s plan,” said Hanley.

“You dirty bastard, you fucking whore,” said Anthony Calabrese. “You’re fucking around with Langley, you get me so screwed up in your own mind about it, you end up fucking me. I’m your fucking agent. I’m in the cold. I want to come in.”

“We can’t help you. I’m sorry, Anthony.”

“You’re fucking sorry? You sorry son-of-a-bitch.” He waited a moment. He tried to let his voice come back to him. He waited, but he knew his old voice, before the events of the day, would not come back.

“I was a fucking snitch, I was working on Weisman, I thought you were going to take care of me—”

“I’m sorry, Anthony. Are you certain you can’t get out?”

“Yes. What the fuck am I going to do?” He felt heat rising, he thought his head would explode. “You were going to send in a helicopter, a plane…”

“There’s a planeload of American journalists at the airport. We can’t get them out. How can we get you out?” The voice was calm, reasonable. It was easier to be reasonable sitting at a desk in an office in the bowels of the Department of Agriculture building in Washington where Hanley was. The office of the operations director of R Section.

“I did what you told me.”

“But nothing happened as we expected,” said Hanley. The voice wavered now because the signal was disrupted by the storm on the gulf.

“You wanted Teddy—”

“We have Weisman now where we want him—”

“And Colonel Ready—”

“Ready was not that much our concern. We only wanted to know what Langley would do.”

“Games. Spy games. You people don’t have no fucking sense of morality.”

“And you, Anthony? A member of the Family. You have morality?”

“I know right from wrong.”

“And you were wrong.”

Pointless. Pointless and stupid and he didn’t have time for this. He stared at the black face of the chief operator whose eyes were bulging with terror, whose lips were wet with sweat.

He dropped the phone. He stared at the operator, at the guard. He saw the operator in the guise of his victim. He didn’t want to kill anyone.

“I won’t hurt you.”

He ran from the building and he ran through the rain but no one came after him. There was no escape on St. Michel. It was a large prison, a cage that imitated freedom like some of the zoos that keep animals in natural habitats. They were not free; Anthony was not free. They killed his cousin and it seemed like a sin to Anthony Calabrese. It was night and the capital was dark and quiet; there was rain; there were no soldiers. They were in the hills now, killing.

Anthony Calabrese ran down the road that skirted the harbor, away from the center of the city.

He was nearly struck by the taxi in the street.

The man smiled at him.

Daniel, the schoolteacher. That fucking fool.

“Monsieur Anthony,” Daniel called cheerfully, a schoolteacher calling his happy class in from recess. Daniel waved out the side window of the cab. The dirty snitch Daniel who traced Monsieur Harry through the boy, Philippe; the informant for Colonel Ready who greeted all the guests at the airport and took them to the right hotel. The hotel that was always full unless it had been arranged to make room for someone Colonel Ready wanted to watch.

Anthony smiled, ran across the road, and put the gun into the side window, next to Daniel’s head.

“Do you want to die, you fucking snitch?”

“No,” said Daniel with happiness. He smiled to make Monsieur Anthony understand it was not his wish to die.

“Get out.”

Daniel was sweating or perhaps it was only the rain.

Anthony Calabrese had no reason to hit him. He had not struck the guard at the telephone exchange or the operator. But Daniel was his brother, his fellow betrayer. He struck himself and knocked Daniel to the pavement instead.

There was no escape, but he pushed the car into gear and went through the narrow streets and turned south on the old coast road toward Madeleine.

Devereaux held Rita’s hand as they ran. They ran along the edge of the road away from the woods that reached from the palace to the suburbs of St. Michel. Her feet were bleeding from sharp stones and fallen branches. She felt no pain.

Harry Francis ran behind them, puffing, the M-17 gripped firmly in his fleshy hand. He did not feel its weight. He felt as light as he had felt twenty-five years before, running behind the big man in Cuba, throwing firecrackers at the swells on their patios, assaulting the bastions of the rich.

She was dazed, running from instinct.

“I can carry you,” he said when they were away from the town and they saw that no one was following them.

“No,” she said. “I can do it alone.”

It had been raining for thirteen hours. The mud was everywhere, rivulets of rain fell from the hills down to the coast road. The road was covered with water. They ran on the road for a while and the water cooled her wounded feet.

“Where?” she said once.

“The fishing village. Another mile.”

“I can run another mile.”

She took her hand away from him and shrugged out of her blanket. She ran naked. She was beautiful running in the rain, in the storm, naked in the middle of the blackness. He saw her in the cracks of lightning that flared over the terrain.

They ran past the Café de la Paix, darkened by the blackout or perhaps, by the storm. Philippe stood at the door. The boy made no sign to them. He did not make a sign to the boy.

“All his fault,” Harry gasped.

“You’re a fool, Harry,” Devereaux said.

She heard none of this. She ran ahead of them. She thought she was running on the beach. She thought of the pain and the pace. Her body ached with blows given her; her bowels felt strangled. Her groin ached and she ran until her legs ached as her body ached. She ran with her head up, free in the rain that beat on her.

And then they saw the lights of the car behind them and Harry waved and they went to the side of the road and waited for the car to pass, thin lights stabbing at the rain and darkness.

The car whooshed past, splattering water on the roadside. In that moment, crouched next to her nakedness, Devereaux saw her face clearly. She was crying but her eyes were as empty as Cain’s eyes had been on the boat.

In a few minutes, the village was ahead of them. The shacks were darkened. The car that had passed them was parking at an angle in front of one of the shacks.

Devereaux and Harry glanced at each other.

“Someone from the palace beat us,” Harry said.

“In one car?”

“Then who the hell is it?”

They were on the beach, running across the sand. The surf was high now and the tide had pushed the water almost to the edge of the shack closest to the water. The harbor was cut naturally into the sand at this point. There were rocks on either side but the harbor was shallow, no more than an odd indentation in the perfect flow of the beach along the nine miles between St. Michel and Madeleine.

Devereaux touched the M-17. Harry looked up. His face made a protest but he handed the other man the gun.

One of the fishing boats had broken up against the rocks and its hull was splayed like broken ribs. The boat had sunk to the bottom of the harbor at the stern; the bow was pointed at a crazy angle to the sky.

Devereaux ran in a crouch to the edge of the first shack. He waited and listened. He heard a sound from inside the shack.

He pushed the submachine gun on semiautomatic and clicked the safety. The figure appeared in the doorway; it was holding a handgun.

Devereaux raised the submachine gun to fire, and a sudden burst of lightning illuminated the figure’s drawn features.

“Cain,” Devereaux said.

“Jesus Christ. You got out.”

“Not yet.”

“There’s someone around here. I didn’t know what to do except wait. There’s a war going on down around Madeleine. Boats and shooting and soldiers shooting off their fucking rifles. Man, I tried to get in but there’s nothing I can do. They’re burning boats in the harbor. I figure if you were there, you’re dead or part of it.”

“Colonel Ready. Celebrating victory over the rebels.”

“The bastard always wins,” Cain said.

Devereaux said, “I’ve got her. And another man.”

Cain turned as suddenly as a terrier hearing a secret sound.

They saw Calabrese at the same time. He had come from the car; he had been between the other two shacks. He was at the edge of the surf and he carried a handgun.

Cain fired without speaking. The two rounds went wide. The man was down, firing. Rounds slammed into the wall of the shack.

One of the fishermen was at the door of the second house and he was shouting but it was impossible to understand him above the wind.

The figure between the shacks fired a third time. Then he rose, running, toward Devereaux.

Devereaux raised the rifle and tried to see clearly enough to get a good shot.

Cain fired again and the bullet was wide.

“No.”

He heard Rita’s voice next to him. “That’s the American. The one…” Her voice was anxious and confused. “Anthony…”

“Anthony!” she yelled into the wind.

The figure stopped.

“We’re Americans!”

Anthony was confused. “Who da fuck are you?”

“Anthony!”

He heard her voice and lightning revealed her nakedness. In a moment, they were crouched in darkness again, together at the edge of the shack.

He stared at her. He stared at the bruised face, the blackened eyes. “Jesus Christ, they did that—”

“Colonel Ready did this,” she said to him.

And Devereaux felt his finger heavy on the trigger guard. He squeezed it because he wished to squeeze the trigger instead, to kill something.

“
Compass Rose
has two sea anchors but there’s no protection, she’s dragging in toward the harbor—”

“How did you get in?”

“Snorkel. Over the side. It isn’t so bad underwater,” Cain said. “You took the dinghy, remember?”

“I can’t see it,” he said.

“Black against black,” Cain replied. “Look there and wait for the lightning.”

They saw it, a ghost ship, dragging at the anchors, pulling them toward the harbor.

“I put it a quarter mile off. Less than a hundred yards now.”

“How deep is it?”

“Seven, eight feet at that distance. She draws five feet.”

“We can’t get out there,” she said. The rain slid down her body. Then Harry Francis tore off his shirt and draped it over her shoulders. It was so immense that it covered her like a loose smock. Harry was naked to his short trousers and in the flashes of light, they saw he was grinning. He was pleased with the action, with killing, with the raw feeling in his throat from running all the way from St. Michel. His heart was pounding wildly in his chest but he didn’t even think about that.

Cain said, “I been thinking. They know me here. I told you.” He looked at Devereaux. “I brought them some shit this time, they’re all half conked out. Let’s take one of their boats. One of the dinghies.
Compass Rose
is dragging and if it gets beached at low tide, I’ll need a half dozen men and a winch and high tide to take her off.”

They dragged a beached dinghy into the water. One of the fishermen watched from the door of the shack, warmed by alcohol and marijuana. He saw they were stealing the dinghy; he didn’t care. He thought they were going to drown in the storm.

All the men were on deck. They heaved the anchors and the engine churned and the props bit the water and the
Compass Rose
protested and bucked into the storm for a hard-won half mile and the anchors were dropped again and the
Compass Rose
, on the open sea, faced the storm and bowed to the pressure of the waves and rode up and bowed and rode up and bowed. It was going to be all right, Cain said and they went below, exhausted and wet.

She sat on a bunk, huddled in a rough woolen blanket, wrapped with towels. She had sat and said nothing while the men had worked on the deck to raise the anchors.

Now they were together in the cabin, exhausted, quiet. They stared at each other as the boat bucked in the waves and the rain pounded at the deck above them so that all the sea sounds were magnified. The cabin was compact, storage lockers all closed, everything made fast. Cain was a careful sailor and smuggler.

“I have a bottle of rum,” Cain said but he made no effort to get it.

Even Harry Francis could not arouse himself from the lethargy of that moment.

Devereaux sat across from her. None of them sat next to her. He stared at her. After a long while, she stared back at him. They did not speak.

He got up and went to the pantry and found the rum and put it in a mug. He found sugar and a little lemon and water. There was no question of heating it. He took the mug and gave it to her.

None of them spoke again for a long time.