Barbary Shore

  I closed the door and descended to the street. The iron gate to Guinevere’s apartment was locked as always, and I rang her bell, and waited for the sound of her steps. On this occasion there was nothing faltering about them. She approached the door, opened it, and smiled broadly at the sight of my face. “Jesus, I haven’t seen you in a dog’s age,” she bawled. “Come on in. I’m going nuts. Have I got a problem!” As I followed her through the foyer, I could catch the odor of heavy perfume and the hem of her purple velvet wrapper swished luxuriously along the floor.

  She led me into the living room, and flopped into an armchair. “Oh, Lordie, I’ll never get in gear.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Look.” With a gesture of mock distaste she extended her arm about the room. Its customary order had vanished. At least twenty boxes and packages of varying size and shape were strewn about the floor. Opened, their contents disgorged, and in quick appraisal I counted two negligees, one black and one pink, a pair of fancy gloves, a spring coat, two lamp shades juxtaposed so violently in style that a hotel lobby could not have contained them both, a pair of shoes, a ten-pound tin of ham, a corset with lace for the hips, a sweater, a silver-plated cork opener, a brooch, an Hawaiian scarf, an oil painting of Spring in the Mountains, and a pastel-bound folio of three slim volumes whose titles I could not read but whose reputation I am certain was mildly pornographic. There were other items so confused with their wrappings that I was unable to classify them, but the ensemble of opened boxes and closed boxes, of white tissue and paper packing, of ribbons and odors grew so overwhelming that I might have thought myself submerged in a dressing room of chorus girls whose naked limbs and mascaraed navels, breasts and black net, peeked out at me through a chiaroscuro of yellow lights and cigarette smoke and costumes hung from the wall.

  “Guinevere,” I managed at last to say, “what are you going to do with all this?”

  “I don’t know,” she groaned. “Boy, what I got myself into.” And with that, as though to weigh the enormity of her disaster, she plunged her hands into a carton at her feet, and brought forth a length of cheap print material which she unrolled with a grimace between us. “And that, too? What did I get that for? Look at it, it’s so cheesy. The damn salesgirl. I knew she was trying to put something over on me.”

  “How’re you going to pay for all these things?”

  Her blue eyes regarded me in innocence. “Oh, I’m not going to buy them all. I’m going to return them, and just keep a couple of things.” She leaned forward in her chair. “But what things should I keep? That’s what I can’t decide.”

  I began to laugh. “Guinevere, if you knew you were going to return nearly all of this, why did you buy it?”

  She looked at me as if my question were utterly without logic. “What has that got to do with it? Lovett, you’re not a woman, so you couldn’t understand.”

  “Well, while you were buying … your collection, did you think you were going to keep everything?”

  She deliberated over this, reluctantly I would say. Probably she had never considered the question before. “I don’t know, Lovett. I suppose so. I mean, you know, I thought how nice this would look and that would look.” Her mouth tightened irritably. “You’re no help at all. What a mess!” And she kicked over a box with her foot, stirred irascibly in the chair. Her coloring was so vivid at the moment, her energy so compelling, that I must have stared at her with evident amazement.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked. “What are you looking at me for?”

  “I was just thinking of the change there’s been since last I saw you.”

  “Oh, that.” She yawned in a pretense of indifference. “Listen, that was a crisis. There’s a saying of some sort which covers it. But I’m all over it now. I know where I stand.” She said this smugly, and yet her restlessness was so pressing that it overflowed in another instant. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with all this stuff when the next batch arrives.”

  “The next batch? How many days have you been doing this?”

  “Just a couple.” She lit a cigarette and burned her fingers with the match. “Oh, damn.” In a rage to punish the pain, she flipped the match into an ashtray with enough force to bounce it out again, and squashed the cigarette after it. “There’ll come a day when I’ll keep this stuff,” she muttered, and in the rapid shifting of her body from side to side in the chair, she knocked over a sewing basket on an end table. Spools and thread scattered into the debris of the room, but Guinevere paid no heed. With an uncomfortable grunt, she reached forward and picked up a small paper bag from the carpet. “This is one thing I’m not giving back,” she told me archly.

  “What is it?”

  “Oh, I’m not showing it to you.”

  “Very well then, don’t.”

  “I oughtn’t to.” With a begrudging air, she emptied the bag into her lap. I saw a khaki-colored object made of cloth.

  “What is it, a brassiere?” I asked.

  “It’s a money belt.”

  “You expect to be handling large sums soon?”

  Her mouth pursed. She exuded an aura of grave import. “I’m prepared, that’s all.”

  “You’re always prepared,” I taunted her.

  “Yeah, well you got your opinion of me, and I got mine of you,” she answered in a surly voice. “You ain’t so hot, Lovett.” And then, the idea first occurring to her, she asked. “What brings you down here anyway?”

  “I’m looking for your husband. I see he’s moved.”

  “Oh, him. What about him?”

  “I was wondering where he is.”

  “He’s around.” Even this she made mysterious.

  “Then he’s not working today.”

  “No.” Guinevere looked at me. “He’s quit his job.”

  “Why did he do that?”

  “Search me. I’m no mind reader.” Her features became twisted with exasperation. “Listen, the time I have been having with that guy. He’s driving me nuts. He’s become a bleeding heart. You ought to hear him talk. Do you know what he keeps telling me?”

  “What?”

  “That there’s no time left. How do you like that? You’d think he was inviting me to his funeral.”

  “I should imagine you’d be concerned.”

  “Mikey,” she said sadly, “there was a time when I was concerned. I’ve been impressed by him just as you are now. I thought he was a gentleman. You know, he’s got brains.” She snorted. “Try eating them sometime.” She massaged a ripple of flesh beneath the velvet wrapper. “You know what he did—he stole my youth away, that’s all; and now I got to look out for Number One. I’m tired of sacrificing myself.”

  “What are you protesting about?” I asked her.

  She shifted heavily in the chair like a businessman about to embark on a new tack. “Lovett, there’s something going on. I can’t enumerate the details for you, so you got to take it on trust. But honest to God it’s Monina I’m thinking of. She’s got a future in Hollywood, a big future, and I got to provide for it. And I know you like the kid, and you like me, so maybe you could help us.”

  I blew cigarette smoke in her direction. “I hardly know how.”

  “Well, you’re his friend. You could advise him.”

  “What do you want me to tell him?”

  Again she deliberated, mounting her profile for my delectation, and then furnishing a veiled glance of her eyes. “Mikey, am I still under your skin?”

  “I would hardly know where to locate you.”

  But apparently this sufficed. Indeed, she must have been looking for any pretext to include me, as if, undoubtedly instructed that this was to be a guarded secret, some special dispensation ought to be found for so quickly relating it. “Now, Mikey, you don’t know this, but he’s got something he won’t give up.”

  “What is it?”

  She held up a hand. “Even if I knew I couldn’t tell you. And I don’t. Honest. I lived with the fellow for all these yea
rs, and I never knew. But he’s got something all right, and it doesn’t do him a bit of good, and if he’d only give it to the interested party whom it would really help, everything would come out fine, and we’d all be sitting pretty. It’s as easy as that. Wouldn’t you say he’s unreasonable?”

  “Don’t you ever feel any loyalty to him at all?”

  She did not answer my question directly. “Mikey, I can see that it’s not fair to ask this of you. After all, I don’t want you to be torn between us. You’ve had it bad enough probably.” She massaged her hand slowly, ritually, as though to exorcise a wrinkle she had found there. “So let’s put it this way. I don’t ask you to do a thing. The interested party has his own methods, and there’ll probably be something going on between them, discussions and who knows what. The important thing is that when he sees the sense of giving it up, that you—well, you know, that you don’t keep me in the dark about it. I’m sort of curious, you see.” And she crooked her hand in the air, holding an imaginary teacup with which she experimented, the little finger curled at an angle.

  “I’m afraid I won’t be of any aid to you.”

  “Well, I’m not asking you to commit yourself,” she said quickly. “Just leave it an open issue. How’s that?” When I did not reply, she folded her hand into her lap again. In the silence which followed, exasperation generated from exasperation until she burst out, “You’re nothing but a sadist, Lovett.”

  I laughed at her.

  “Oh, it’s easy for you,” she said bitterly. “What do you know of the worries I got? Everything’s going wrong. Even Monina’s turned against me. I’ve slaved my life away for her, and now you ought to see the way she runs after him. He never paid any attention to her since she was born, but that don’t bother Monina. You’d think it was a love affair.” She pulled at a curl on her head and readjusted it with a hairpin. “Right now she’s with him.”

  “Where are they?”

  Guinevere was sullen. “They went out for a walk, and they’re probably back in his room.”

  “I thought he moved down here.”

  “He did. But his business appointments he keeps separate.”

  “Business appointments?” Ideally, a parrot would be her best companion.

  “Well, not exactly. But whatever it is, he and the other party got some things to talk over.”

  “They’re going to do it right now?” I felt so great a desire to be present that she must have discerned it without difficulty.

  “In a couple of minutes, I suppose. Maybe ten, maybe twenty.” She could afford to be casual. “What’s the matter? You want to be there?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Guinevere smirked at this obvious lie. “Well, I don’t see what’s stopping you.”

  “Probably they would prefer no company.”

  She shrugged. “You can’t tell. You’re sort of different. There’s no predicting what they’d say.”

  “Why won’t you be there?”

  Her mouth became pinched. “They both told me they didn’t want me. So that’s that.” Almost instantly she concealed this resentment, but by an effort intense enough to suggest the frustration she felt. “Oh, brotherrrrr, it’s a big world,” she declared suddenly.

  I stood up. “I’m going to try to be there.”

  She laughed. “Mikey …”

  “Yes?”

  “Be a good guy, and remember that I’m the one who told you all about it. You know, I do something for you, and you do something for me …” Her voice trailed off. “Just remember what I said anyway.”

  NINETEEN

  EVEN as I came to the head of the stairs, I could hear squeals coming from McLeod’s room. I opened his door and looked within, but for many seconds neither he nor Monina was aware of me. The child twisted in the air, giggling in rare delight, her thighs flailing, fists pummeling his bony arms which threw her up and caught her, threw her up within a handspan of the ceiling and caught her not six inches from the floor. They were both laughing, and when he set her astride his shoulders, she grasped his straight black hair, and jogged up and down. “Horsie, horsie, play horsie,” she cried. He made a pretense of galloping, clumping his heels against the floor, and she was almost helpless with glee.

  Then McLeod saw me, and his gaiety ceased. He removed the child from her perch, set her on the floor, and greeted me coolly. “Where have you been?” he asked.

  “I just saw your wife.”

  “Mmm.” He inclined his head. And did she tell you I’ve become a new man?”

  “In a sense.”

  Monina was tugging at his pants, and he tousled her hair almost unconsciously. “Yes, I’ve been attempting to force a revolution into my life, and that’s a touchy business at best.” I have the idea he must have been a little drunk. There was liquor on his breath, and his speech had become slurred just perceptibly. Monina hopped restlessly from one foot to the other. She gave a sigh of boredom and began to poke at the mattress with her finger. “Bah, bah, blah, blah,” she burbled.

  “What’s the matter, Monina?” he asked.

  Her head was turned down. She would not look at him.

  “I lived in this room for two years,” McLeod said to me.

  “It’s a long time.”

  “It’s a very long time when a child is growing up. There’s the trespass if one is looking for punishment. Do you know there’d often be a month go by, and I wouldn’t see her more than once or twice. We’re strangers to each other now.” He caught Monina by the arms. “Do you love your daddie?” he asked.

  She twisted uncomfortably and like a wild bird struggled to be free. “No.” Once loose from him, however, she giggled.

  “If her tongue were developed, she could well add that she loves no one and trusts no one for that is her birthmark. Yes, she’s my daughter right enough,” he said blackly. With scorn upon his mouth he reached forward and tapped me with one finger on the knee. “You see me as the sentimental parent, but there were other times. D’ye have any conception of the desperate anger which can come upon a man when he sits in his living room with a legally engraved spouse, the act of marriage having divorced them from all passion and all friendship so that they live in guilt and hate and very occasionally in love. And there before them on the floor is the sweet product of their distaste, an infant mewling with snot on her lip and turd in her seat. So a man like m’self sits there, and reflects that very few of the good years are left to him, and he’s bound not only to the woman but to the child until it chokes him so much he could crush the infant’s skull with his fist.” The finger jabbed my knee again. “You draw back from that, do you? A horror. Yet I sat there, and with impeccable reason I would not care to refute even today, came to the conclusion that to murder one’s own child is the least reprehensible form of murder. For do in a stranger, and you know nothing of what lives you snarl and what grief you bestrew. But take the axe to your own brat, and the emotional price is yours alone. Murder is nothing and consequence is all.” He took a breath. “I’d give an arm to have the child love me,” he said abruptly, “and that’s a barometer to my weakness which increases with the years.”

  “She may yet,” I suggested.

  He nodded. Perhaps he grappled a beast who threw him first to one side and then another, for he reversed everything he had said. “There’s hope in the situation, Mikey. It’s just that I’ve been starved too long, and I’m suspicious of food.” Into his impassive eyes a glint of feeling wavered. “She … that is my wife … I would say that all capacity for feeling is not dead between us. There are times when I sense that it moves her, my being there. She does odd things, you know. There are times when she comes to me, there’s a softness in her, but she’s wary. I don’t say as I can blame her, the truth being that I must always fight with myself to keep from looking for the first train west. But still I like to think there are possibilities for us.”

  My last conversation with Guinevere was quite vivid. “You’ve a sentimental idiot,??
? I said to him.

  McLeod lit a cigarette. “And you are taken in by appearances. No doubt she had a few choice words to apply to me.”

  “More than a few.”

  He rode past this with a shrug. “Lovett, you’ve got a deficient imagination. You can’t conceive how she and I could construct something together. But that’s because you think love is a spirit vapor.”

  “It’s as good an explanation as any.”

  He laughed at me. “Love is simple to understand if you haven’t got a mind soft and full of holes. It’s a crutch, that’s all, and there isn’t a one of us doesn’t need a crutch. You take a mixture of lust and compassion, affection and ego, you shake it well, and you pour it into the mold of your own need. And after that you got a crutch. Makes it easier to rear back and look at the cosmos.”

  “Still, it can’t be just anybody,” I protested.

  “Not today, no. Existence warps too much. It sets us so we can only receive certain kinds of opposite numbers. But in the abstract, in essence, any two human beings can find warmth together. It’s a primitive notion, and history won’t set it free again until socialism is established. That’s the human assumption of socialism, to find relationships with everybody, and none of your dope needles about marriage, family, and the spirit vapor of love and God.” The expression on his mouth of a man who sips vinegar, he added, “And it’s in the Soviet that you’ll find this freedom.”

  With that, he looked at his watch and said to me, “Now, I hope you’ll excuse me, but I must ask you to leave, m’dear. And if you’d take Monina down to her mother, I’d accept it all as a favor.”

  “I intend to stay here,” I announced.

  He looked at me with no humor whatsoever. “Are you serious?”

  I nodded.

  McLeod turned to Monina and in a quiet voice said, “Go downstairs now, baby.”

  She shook her head. “Monina, you go downstairs,” he repeated firmly. She made no more than a gesture of rebellion, and then accepted his decision. “Daddie play with me later?” she asked.