Islands in the Stream

  “All right. But call him up.”

  “Word of honor I’ll call him. And word of honor I’ll eat a first-rate dinner.”

  He smiled, patted Honest Lil on the shoulder, and was gone. He moved very beautifully for such a big man.

  “What about the girls at his place?” Thomas Hudson asked Honest Lil.

  “They’re gone by now,” Honest Lil said. “There’s nothing to eat there. And I don’t think there is much to drink. Do you want to go around there or would you rather come to my place?”

  “Your place,” Thomas Hudson said. “But later on.”

  “Tell me another happy story.”

  “All right. What about?”

  “Serafín,” Lil said. “Give Tomás another double frozen without sugar. Tengo todavía mi highbalito.” Then to Thomas Hudson, “About the happiest time you remember. And not with smells.”

  “It has to have smells,” Thomas Hudson said. He watched Henry Wood across the square getting into the sport car of the very rich sugar planter named Alfred. Henry Wood was too big for the car. He was too big for almost anything, he thought. But he knew three or four things he was not too big for. No, he said to himself. This is your day off. Take your day off.

  “What do you want the story to be about?”

  “What I asked you.”

  He watched Serafín pour the drink from the shaker into the tall glass and saw the top of it curl over the edge and onto the bar. Serafín pushed the base of the glass into the slit in a cardboard protector and Thomas Hudson lifted it, heavy and cold above the thin stem he held in his ringers, and took a long sip and held it in his mouth, cold against his tongue and teeth, before he swallowed it.

  “All right,” he said. “The happiest day I ever had was any day when I woke in the morning when I was a boy and I did not have to go to school or to work. In the morning I was always hungry when I woke and I could smell the dew in the grass and hear the wind in the high branches of the hemlock trees, if there was a wind, and if there was no wind I could hear the quietness of the forest and the calmness of the lake and I would listen for the first noises of morning. Sometimes the first noise would be a kingfisher flying over the water that was so calm it mirrored his reflection and he made a clattering cry as he flew. Sometimes it would be a squirrel chittering in one of the trees outside the house, his tail jerking each time he made a noise. Often it would be the plover calling on the hillside. But whenever I woke and heard the first morning noises and felt hungry and knew I would not have to go to school nor have to work, I was happier than I have ever been.”

  “Even than with women?”

  “I’ve been very happy with women. Desperately happy. Unbearably happy. So happy that I could not believe it; that it was like being drunk or crazy. But never as happy as with my children when we were all happy together or the way I was early in the morning.”

  “But how could you be as happy by yourself as with someone?”

  “This is all silly. You asked me to tell you whatever came in my mind.”

  “No, I didn’t. I said to tell me a happy story about the happiest time you remember. That wasn’t a story. You just woke up and were happy. Tell me a real story.”

  “What about?”

  “Put some love in it.”

  “What kind of love? Sacred or profane?”

  “No. Just good love with fun.”

  “I know a good story about that.”

  “Tell it to me then. Do you want another drink?”

  “Not till I finish this one. All right. At this time I was in Hong Kong which is a very wonderful city where I was very happy and had a crazy life. There is a beautiful bay and on the mainland side of the bay is the city of Kowloon. Hong Kong itself is on a hilly island that is beautifully wooded and there are winding roads up to the top of the hills and houses built high up in the hills and the city is at the base of the hills facing Kowloon. You go back and forth by fast, modern ferryboats. This Kowloon is a fine city and you would like it very much. It is clean and well laid-out and the forest comes to the edge of the city and there is very fine wood pigeon shooting just outside of the compound of the Women’s Prison. We used to shoot the pigeons, which were large and handsome with lovely purple shading feathers on their necks, and a strong swift way of flying, when they would come in to roost just at twilight in a huge laurel tree that grew just outside the white-washed wall of the prison compound. Sometimes I would take a high incomer, coming very fast with the wind behind him, directly overhead and the pigeon would fall inside the compound of the prison and you would hear the women shouting and squealing with delight as they fought over the bird and then squealing and shrieking as the Sikh guard drove them off and retrieved the bird which he then brought dutifully out to us through the sentry’s gate of the prison.

  “The mainland around Kowloon was called the New Territories and it was hilly and forested and there were many wood pigeons, and in the evening you could hear them calling to each other. There were often women and children digging the earth from the side of the roads and putting it into baskets. When they saw you with a shotgun, they ran and hid in the woods. I found out that they dug the earth because it had wolfram, the ore of tungsten, in it. This was very saleable then.”

  “Es un poco pesada esta historia.”

  “No, Honest Lil. It isn’t really a dull story. Wait and see. Wolfram itself is pesado. But it is a very strange business. Where it exists it is the easiest thing there is to mine. You simply dig up the dirt and haul it away. Or you pick up the stones and carry them off. There are whole villages in Extremadura in Spain that are built of rock that has very high grade wolfram ore and the stone fences of the peasant’s field are all made of this ore. Yet the peasants are very poor. At this time it was so valuable that we were using DC-2’s, transport planes such as fly from here to Miami, to fly it over from a field at Nam Yung in Free China to Kai Tak airport at Kowloon. From there it was shipped to the States. It was considered very scarce and of vital importance in our preparations for war since it was needed for hardening steel, yet anyone could go out and dig up as much of it in the hills of the New Territories as he or she could carry on a flat basket balanced on the head to the big shed where it was bought clandestinely. I found this out when I was hunting wood pigeons and I brought it to the attention of people purchasing wolfram in the interior. No one was very interested and I kept bringing it to the attention of people of higher rank until one day a very high officer who was not at all interested that wolfram was there free to be dug up in the New Territories said to me, ‘But after all, old boy, the Nam Yung set-up is functioning you know.’ But when we shot in the evenings outside the women’s prison and would see an old Douglas twin-motor plane come in over the hills and slide down toward the airfield, and you knew it was loaded with sacked wolfram and had just flown over the Jap lines, it was strange to know that many of the women in the women’s prison were there for having been caught digging wolfram illicitly.”

  “Sí, es raro,” Honest Lil said. “But when does the love come in?”

  “Any time you want it,” Thomas Hudson said. “But you’ll like it better if you know the sort of place it happened in.

  “There are many islands and bays around Hong Kong and the water is clear and beautiful. The New Territories was really a wooded and hilly peninsula that extended out from the mainland and the island Hong Kong was built on is in the great, blue, deep bay that runs from the South China Sea all the way up to Canton. In the winter the climate was much as it is today when there is a norther blowing, with rain and blustery weather and it was cool for sleeping.

  “I would wake in the mornings and even if it were raining I would walk to the fish market. Their fish are almost the same as ours and the basic food fish is the red grouper. But they had very fat and shining pompano and huge prawns, the biggest I have ever seen. The fish market was wonderful in the early morning when the fish were brought in shining and fresh caught and there were quite a few fish I did not kn
ow, but not many and there were also wild ducks for sale that had been trapped. You could see pintails, teal, widgeon, both males and females in winter plumage, and there were wild ducks that I had never seen with plumage as delicate and complicated as our wood ducks. I would look at them and their unbelievable plumage and their beautiful eyes and see the shining, fat, new-caught fish and the beautiful vegetables all manured in the truck gardens by human excrement, they called it ‘night-soil’ there, and the vegetables were as beautiful as snakes. I went to the market every morning, and every morning it was a delight.

  “Then in the mornings there were always people being carried through the streets to be buried, with the mourners dressed in white and a band playing gay tunes. The tune they played oftenest for funeral processions that year was ‘Happy Days Are Here Again.’ During a day you were almost never out of sound of it, for people were dying in great numbers and there were said to be four hundred millionaires living on the Island besides whatever millionaires were living in Kowloon.”

  “¿Millonarios chinos?”

  “Mostly Chinese millionaires. But millionaires of all sorts. I knew many millionaires myself and we used to have lunch together at the great Chinese restaurants. They had several restaurants that are as great as any in the world and the Cantonese cooking is superb. My best friends that year were ten millionaires, all of whom I knew only by their first two initials, H.M., M.Y., T.V., H.J., and so on. All important Chinese were known in this way. Also three Chinese generals, one of whom came from Whitechapel in London and was a truly splendid man, an inspector of police; about six pilots for the Chinese National Aviation Company, who were making fabulous money and earning all of it and more; a policeman; a partially insane Australian; a number of British officers and— But I will not bore you with the rest of them. I had more friends, close and intimate friends, in Hong Kong than I ever had before or since.”

  “¿Cuándo viene el amor?”

  “I am trying to think what amor to put in first. All right. Here comes some amor.”

  “Make it good because I’m already a little tired by China.”

  “You wouldn’t have been. You would have been in love with it as I was.”

  “Why didn’t you stay there, then?”

  “You couldn’t stay there because the Japs were going to come in and take it at any time.”

  “Todo está jodido por la guerra.”

  “Yes,” said Thomas Hudson. “I agree.” He had never heard Honest Lil use such a strong word and he was surprised.

  “Me cansan con la guerra.”

  “Me, too,” said Thomas Hudson. “I’m very tired of it. But I’m never tired of thinking about Hong Kong.”

  “Tell me about it then. It is bastante interestante. I just wanted to hear about love.”

  “Actually everything was so interesting that there was not much time for love.”

  “Who did you make love to first?”

  “I made love to a very tall and beautiful Chinese girl who was very European and emancipated but would not go to the hotel to sleep with me because she said everybody would know about it and who would not let me sleep at her house because she said the servants would know about it. Her police dog already knew about it. He used to make it very difficult.”

  “So where did you make love?”

  “The way you do when you are children; in any place I could persuade her to and especially in vehicles and conveyances.”

  “It must have been very bad for our friend, Mister X.”

  “It was.”

  “Was that all the love you made? Didn’t you ever sleep a night together?”

  “Never.”

  “Poor Tom. Was she worth all that trouble?”

  “I don’t know. I think so. I should have rented a house instead of staying on at the hotel.”

  “You should have rented a Sin House the way everyone does here.”

  “I don’t like a Sin House.”

  “I know. But after all if you wanted the girl.”

  “The problem was solved another way. You’re not bored?”

  “No, Tom, please. Not now. How was the problem solved?”

  “One night I had dinner with the girl and then we rode in a boat for a long time and that was wonderful but uncomfortable. She had skin that was wonderful to touch and all the preliminaries of making love made her very excited and her lips were thin but they were very heavy with love. Then we went from the boat to her house and the police dog was there and there was the problem of not waking anyone and finally I went to the hotel alone and I didn’t feel good about any of it and I was tired of arguing and I knew she was right but I thought what the hell is the use of being so damned emancipated if you can’t go to bed. I thought if we are going to be emancipated, let’s free the sheets. Anyway I was feeling gloomy and frustrado—”

  “I’ve never seen you frustrado. You must be funny frustrado.”

  “I’m not. I’m just mean and that night I felt mean and disgusted.”

  “Go on with the story.”

  “Well, I got my key at the desk very frustrado and the hell with everything. It was a very big and rich and richly gloomy hotel and I rode up in the elevator to what I knew was my big and rich and gloomy and lonely room and no beautiful tall Chinese girl in it. So I walked down the corridor and unlocked the massive door of my gigantic gloomy room and then I saw what was there.”

  “What was it?”

  “Three absolutely beautiful Chinese girls, so beautiful they made my beautiful Chinese girl that I couldn’t get to bed seem like a schoolteacher. They were so beautiful you couldn’t stand it and none of them spoke any English.”

  “Where were they from?”

  “One of my millionaires sent them. One of them had a note for me on very thick paper in a parchment envelope. All it said was, ‘Love from C.W.’ ”

  “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t know their own customs so I shook hands with them and I kissed each one of them and then I told them that I thought the best way for all to get acquainted was to all take a shower.”

  “How did you tell them?”

  “In English.”

  “Did they understand?”

  “I made them understand correctly.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I was very embarrassed because I had never made love with three girls. Two girls is fun even though you do not like it. It’s not twice as good as one girl but it is different, and it is fun anyway when you are drunk. But three girls is a lot of girls and I was embarrassed. So I asked them if they wanted a drink and they didn’t. So I had a drink and we sat on the bed, which was fortunately, a very big bed, although they were all very small, and then I turned the lights out.”

  “Was it fun?”

  “It was wonderful. It was wonderful to be in bed with a Chinese girl who was just as smooth as the girl I knew, and much smoother, and who was both shy and shameless and not emancipated at all, and then multiply that by three, and have it in the dark. I had never held three girls in my arms before. But you can do it. They had been trained and they knew many things I did not know and it was all in the dark and I did not want ever to go to sleep. But I did finally and when I woke in the morning they were all asleep and as beautiful as they had looked when I first came in the room. They were the most beautiful girls I ever saw.”

  “More beautiful than I was when you first knew me twenty-five years ago?”

  “No, Lil. No puede ser. They were Chinese girls and you know how beautiful a Chinese girl can be. And I loved Chinese girls anyway.”

  “No es pervertido.”

  “No, it certainly isn’t a perversion.”

  “But three.”

  “Three is several. And love was made to be made with one, I grant you.”

  “Anyway, I’m glad you had them. Don’t think I’m jealous. You didn’t seek it out and besides it was a present. I hate the police dog woman who wouldn’t go to bed. But, Tom, didn’t you feel hollow in
the morning?”

  “Of such hollowness you can’t imagine. Really hollow. And I felt debauched from the top of my head to between my toes and my back was dead and the root of my spine ached.”

  “So you had a drink.”

  “So I had a drink and I felt a little better and very happy.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I looked at them all asleep and I wished I could take a picture of them. They would have made a wonderful picture asleep and I was so damned hungry and hollow feeling and I looked out through the curtains at the weather outside. It was raining. So I thought that was fine and we would stay in bed all day. But I had to have some breakfast and I had to figure out about breakfast for them. So I took a shower with the door shut and then dressed very quietly and went out, closing the door so it made no noise at all. Downstairs I had breakfast in the early morning dining room of the hotel and I had a big breakfast of kippers, rolls and marmalade, and some mushrooms and bacon. All very good. I drank a big pot of tea and had a double whisky and soda with breakfast and still felt hollow inside. I read the Hong Kong morning English paper and wondered how late they slept. Finally I went out to the front door of the hotel and looked outside and it was still raining hard. I went to the bar but it was not yet open. They had brought me my drink at breakfast from the service bar. Then I couldn’t wait any longer and I went back up to the room and unlocked the door. They were all gone.”

  “How terrible.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “So what did you do? You had a drink I suppose.”

  “Yes. I had a drink and then I went in and washed myself again very good with much soap and water and then I commenced to have double remorse.”

  “¿Un doble remordimiento?”

  “No. Two remorses. Remorse because I had slept with three girls. And remorse because they were gone.”

  “I remember when you used to have remorse after you stayed with me. But you got over it.”

  “I know. I always get over everything. I was always a man of big remorses. But this morning in the hotel was gigantic double remorse.”